Napoleon

One day Napoleon was on the parade ground, drilling with his long unwieldy musket. He made a mistake, whereupon the senior cadet, who was instructing him, gave him a sharp rap over the knuckles. This was contrary to regulations. In a fury Napoleon threw his musket at the senior cadet’s head – never again, he swore, would he receive lessons from him. His superiors, seeing that they would have to handle this new cadet carefully, gave him another instructor, Alexandre des Mazis. Napoleon and Alexandre, who was one year ahead of him, at once struck up a lasting friendship.

The effeminate Laugier de Bellecour, once in Paris, definitely threw in his lot with the ‘queers’, indeed at one point the school authorities were so disgusted that they decided to send him back to Brienne, but were overruled by the Minister. When Laugier tried to renew relations Napoleon replied, ‘Monsieur, you have scorned my advice, and so you have renounced my friendship. Never speak to me again.’ Laugier was furious. Later he came on Napoleon from behind and pushed him down. Napoleon got up, ran after him, caught him by the collar and threw him to the floor. In falling Laugier hit his head against a stove, and the captain on duty rushed up to administer punishment. ‘I was insulted,’ Napoleon explained, ‘and I took my revenge. There’s nothing more to be said.’ And he calmly walked off.

Napoleon was evidently upset by Laugier’s relapse, which he linked with the luxury of his new surroundings. He sat down and wrote the Minister of War a ‘memorandum on the education of Spartan youth’, whose example he suggested should be followed in French academies. He sent a draft to Father Berton, but was advised by him to drop the whole affair, so his curious essay never reached its destination. This small episode is, however, important in two ways. As he later told a friend, Napoleon quite often felt physical attraction for men; it was because he had personal experience of homosexual urges that he was so eager to see them damped down. The other aspect of his essay is that it shows Napoleon for the first time sensing a national malaise. The malaise was real, but only a few, chiefly artists, sensed it. 1785, the year Napoleon wrote, was the year of the Diamond Necklace scandal, and the year when Louis David, reacting against the malaise, painted Le Serment des Horaces, in which after sixty years of lolling on beds and swings and scented cushions, the figures in French art suddenly snap to attention.

Napoleon spent his leisure moments, says Alexandre des Mazis, striding through the school, arms folded, head lowered – a posture for which he was criticized on parade. He thought often of his unsophisticated homeland and of exiled Paoli, who had modelled the Corsican constitution on Sparta’s. One of his friends made a funny drawing of Napoleon walking with long steps, a little Paoli hanging on to the knot at the back of his hair, with the caption, ‘Bonaparte, run, fly, to the help of Paoli and rescue him from his enemies.’

In the month after Napoleon entered the Ecole Militaire, his father came to the south of France to seek medical advice. He suffered from almost continual pain in the stomach, and a diet of pears prescribed in Paris by no less a man than Marie Antoinette’s physician had brought him no relief. At Aix he consulted Professor Turnatori, then went on to Montpellier, which had a famous medical faculty specializing in herbal remedies. Here he saw three more doctors, but they could do nothing to cure his pain or the vomiting which they described as ‘persistent, stubborn and hereditary’. Carlo had never been very religious but now he insisted on seeing a priest and during his last days he was comforted and given the sacraments by the vicar of the church of Saint-Denis. At the end of February 1785 he died of cancer of the stomach.

Napoleon, who had loved and respected his father, certainly experienced a deep sense of loss. He was particularly saddened that Carlo should have died away from Corsica amid ‘the indifference’ of a strange town. But when the chaplain wished to take him for a few hours to the solitude of the infirmary, as the custom was, Napoleon declined, saying that he was strong enough to bear the news. He wrote at once to his mother – Joseph was going home to look after her – but his letter, like all cadets’ letters, was re-styled by an officer, and ended up a formal, rather stilted exercise in filial consolation. A better sign of his feelings is that when a family friend in Paris offered to lend him some pocket money, ‘My mother has too many expenses already,’ Napoleon said. ‘I mustn’t add to them.’

Paris, moreover, sometimes provided free amusements. One day in March 1785 Napoleon and Alexandre des Mazis went to the Champ de Mars to watch Blanchard prepare to ascend in a hot-air balloon. Ever since the Montgolfier brothers had seen a shirt drying and billowing in front of a fire and so conceived the principle of ballooning, this sport had caught the public’s fancy. For some reason Blanchard kept delaying his ascent. The hours passed and no balloon rose into the air. Napoleon grew impatient: it was one of his traits that he could not bear to hang around doing nothing. Suddenly he stepped forward, drew a knife from his pocket and cut the retaining cords. At once the balloon rose into the air, drifted over the Paris rooftops and was later found far away, deflated. For this escapade, says Alexandre, Napoleon was severely punished.

Napoleon worked hard at the Ecole Militaire. He continued to do very well in mathematics and geography. He liked fencing and was noted for the number of foils he broke. He was very poor at sketching plans of fortifications, at drawing and again, at dancing, and so hopeless at German that he was usually dispensed from attending classes. Instead he read Montesquieu, the leading panegyrist of the Roman Republic.

Normally a cadet spent two years at the Ecole Militaire, especially when following the difficult artillery course. But Napoleon did so well in his exams that he passed out after only one year. He came forty-second in the list of fifty-eight who received commissions, but most of the others had spent several years in the school. More significant is the fact that only three were younger than Napoleon. His commission being antedated to 1 September, Napoleon became an officer at the age of sixteen years and fifteen days.

In 1785 there was no intake of officers into the navy, so Napoleon did not realize his ambition to be a sailor. Instead he was commissioned in the artillery: an obvious choice, given his flair for mathematics. He was handed his commission, signed personally by Louis XVI, and at the passing-out parade received his insignia: a silver neck-buckle, a polished leather belt and a sword.

On free days Napoleon sometimes visited the Permon family. Madame Permon was a Corsican, knew the Buonapartes, and had been kind to Carlo in the south of France; married to a rich army commissary, she had two daughters, Cécile and Laure. Napoleon put on his new officer’s boots and insignia and proudly went round to the Permon house at 13 Place de Conti. But the two sisters burst out laughing at the sight of his thin legs lost in his long officer’s boots. When Napoleon showed some annoyance, Cécile reproved him. ‘Now you have your officer’s sword you must protect the ladies and be pleased that they tease you.’

‘It’s obvious you’re just a little schoolgirl,’ replied Napoleon.

‘What about you? You’re just a puss-in-boots!’

Napoleon took the quip in good part. Next day out of his scant savings he bought Cécile a copy of Puss-in-Boots and her younger sister Laure a model of Puss-in-Boots running ahead of the carriage belonging to his master, the Marquis de Carabas.

Five and three-quarter years ago Napoleon had arrived in France an Italian-speaking Corsican boy. Now he was a Frenchman, an officer of the King. He had done well. But the death of his father had left him with heavy responsibilities. At the moment he was the only financial resource of his mother, a widow with eight children. He was allowed to select his regiment and because he wanted to be as close as possible to his mother, and to his brothers and sisters, he chose the La Fère regiment; not only was it one of the very best, but it was stationed in Valence, the nearest garrison town to Corsica.

CHAPTER 3 The Young Reformer

VALENCE, on the River Rhône, in Napoleon’s day was a pleasant town of 5,000 inhabitants, notable for several fine abbeys and priories and for the strong citadel built by François I and modernized by Vauban. Officers lived in billets, and Napoleon found himself a first-floor room on the front of the Café Cercle. It was a rather noisy room, where he could hear the click of billiard balls in the adjoining saloon, but he liked the landlady, Mademoiselle Bou, an old maid of fifty who mended his linen, and he stayed on with her during all his time in Valence. As Second Lieutenant his pay was ninety-three livres a month; his room cost him eight livres eight sols.

For his first nine weeks Napoleon, as a new officer, served in the ranks and got first-hand experience of the ordinary soldier’s duties, including mounting guard. The rank and file were ill paid and slept two in a bed – until recently it had been three – but at least they were never flogged, whereas soldiers in the English and Prussian armies often were: indeed a sentence of 800 lashes was not unknown.

In January 1786 Napoleon took up his full duties as a second lieutenant. In the morning he went to the polygon to manœuvre guns and practise firing, in the afternoon to lectures on ballistics, trajectories and fire power. The guns were of bronze and of three sizes: 4-, 8-, and 12-pounders. The 12-pounder, which was drawn by six horses, had an effective range of 1,200 yards. All fired metal balls of three types: solid, red-hot shot, and short-range case-shot. The guns were new – they had been designed nine years earlier – and were the best in Europe. Napoleon soon became deeply interested in everything to do with them. One day, with his friend Alexandre des Mazis, who had also joined the La Fére regiment, he walked to Le Creusot to see the royal cannon foundry; here an Englishman, John Wilkinson, and a Lorrainer, Ignace de Wendel, had installed the most modern plant on English lines, using not wood but coke, with steam-engines and a horse-drawn railway.

Off duty Napoleon enjoyed himself. He made friends with Monsignor Tardivon, abbot of Saint-Ruf in Valence, to whom Bishop de Marbeuf had given him an introduction, and with the local gentry, some of whom had pretty daughters. He liked walking and climbed to the top of nearby Mont Roche Colombe. In winter he went skating. He took dancing lessons and went to dances. He paid a visit to a Corsican friend, Pontornini, who lived in nearby Tournon. Pontornini drew his portrait, the earliest that survives, and inscribed it: ‘Mio Caro Amico Buonaparte’.

Both in Valence and in Auxonne, where he was posted in June 1788, Napoleon got on well with his fellow officers, and now that he was earning his own living seems to have been more relaxed. However, there were occasional discords. In Auxonne, in the room above his, an officer named Belly de Bussy insisted on playing the horn, and he played out of tune. Napoleon one day met Belly on the staircase. ‘My dear fellow, haven’t you had enough of playing that damned instrument?’ ‘Not in the least.’ ‘Well, other people have.’ Belly challenged Napoleon to a duel, and Napoleon accepted; then their friends stepped in and arranged the matter harmoniously.

To help out his mother, Napoleon offered to take his brother Louis to share his billet in Auxonne. Louis, then aged eleven, was Napoleon’s favourite in the family, just as Napoleon was Louis’s favourite. Napoleon acted as schoolmaster to the younger boy, gave him catechism lessons for his first Communion, and also cooked meals for them both, for money had become very scarce in the Buonaparte family. When he needed linen from home, Napoleon paid his mother the cost of sending it, and sometimes he had to keep his letters short, in order to save postage.

As a second lieutenant Napoleon spent much of his time reading and studying: indeed he put himself through almost the equivalent of a university course. In Valence he bought or borrowed books from Pierre Marc Aurel’s bookshop opposite the Café Cercle. Evidently Aurel could not supply all his needs, for on 29 July 1786 he wrote to a Geneva bookseller for the Memoirs of Rousseau’s protectress, Madame de Warens, adding, ‘I should be obliged if you would mention what books you have about the island of Corsica, which you could get for me promptly.’

Napoleon read so much partly because he hoped at this time to become a writer. A review of what he read and wrote will give an excellent indication of how he came to make his fateful choice when the French Revolution began.

To start with Napoleon’s lighter reading. One book he savoured was Alcibiade, a French adaptation of a German historical novel. Another was ‘La Chaumière Indienne, by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. It describes the healthy-mindedness of simple people living close to Nature; it is full of generous, humane and spontaneous feelings. Napoleon liked this sort of novel, as indeed did many of his contemporaries; they found in it an antidote to the cold calculating perversity of sophisticated society, as revealed by Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Even when reading for diversion, Napoleon aimed at self-improvement. He copied into a notebook unfamiliar words or names, such as Dance of Daedalus, Pyrrhic dance; Odeum – theatre – Prytaneum; Timandra, a famous courtesan who remained constantly faithful to Alcibiades in his misfortunes; Rajahs, Pariah, coconut milk, Bonzes, Lama.

Napoleon also liked The Art of Judging Character from Men’s Faces by the Swiss Protestant pastor and mystic, Jean Gaspard Lavater. In a popular style and with the help of excellent illustrations Lavater analysed the noses, eyes, ears and stance of various human types and of historical figures, with the purpose of tracing the effects on the body of spiritual qualities and defects. Napoleon thought so well of the book that he planned to write a similar study himself.

From other, more serious books – thirty in all – Napoleon took notes, at the rate of about one page of notes a day, 120,000 words altogether. He took notes chiefly on passages containing numbers, proper names, anecdotes and words in italics. For example, from Marigny’s History of the Arabs: ‘Soliman is said to have eaten 100 pounds of meat a day …’ ‘Hischam owned 10,000 shirts, 2,000 belts, 4,000 horses and 700 estates, two of which produced 10,000 drachmas …’ He was excited by large numbers and on the rare occasions when he made a slip it was usually to make the figure larger, as when he said the Spanish Armada comprised 150 ships, where his author had 130.

From Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle Napoleon took notes on the formation of the planets, and of the earth, of rivers, seas, lakes, winds, volcanoes, earthquakes, and, especially, of man. ‘Some men,’ he noted, ‘are born with only one testicle, others have three; they are stronger and more vigorous. It is astonishing how much this part of the body contributes to [his] strength and courage. What a difference between a bull and an ox, a ram and a sheep, a cock and a capon!’ Then he copied a long passage on the various methods of castration – by amputation, compression, and decoction of herbs, ending with the statement that in 1657 Tavernier claimed to have seen 22,000 eunuchs in the kingdom of Golconda. Like many young men, Napoleon seems for a time to have had a subconscious fear of castration.

Second Lieutenant Buonaparte never read lives of generals, histories of war or books of tactics. Most of his reading stemmed from a glaringly obvious fact: something was wrong with France. There was injustice, there was unnecessary poverty, there was corruption in high places. On 27 November 1786 Napoleon wrote in his notebook: ‘We are members of a powerful monarchy, but today we feel only the vices of its constitution.’ Napoleon, like everyone else, saw that reform was needed. But what sort of reform? In order to articulate his own feelings and to seek an answer, Napoleon began to read history and political theory.

He started with Plato’s Republic, about which his main conclusion was that ‘Every man who rules issues orders not in his own interest but in the interest of his subjects.’ From Rollin’s Ancient History he took notes on Egypt – he was shocked by the tyranny of the Pharaohs – Assyria, Lydia, Persia and Greece. Athens, he notes, was originally ruled by a king, but we cannot conclude from this that monarchy is the most natural and primordial form of government. Of Lycurgus he notes: ‘Dykes were required against the king’s power or else despotism would have reigned. The people’s energy had to be maintained and moderated so that they should be neither slaves nor anarchists.’ Of Marigny’s History of the Arabs he read three out of four volumes, and ignored the pages on religion. ‘Mahomet did not know how to read or write, which I find improbable. He had seventeen wives.’ China he glanced at in Voltaire’s Essai sur les Maurs, and quoted Confucius on the obligation of a ruler continually to renew himself in order to renew the people by his example.

In these and other notes two main attitudes stand out. Napoleon had a keen sympathy with the oppressed and a distaste for tyranny in any form, whether it was the Almighty inflicting eternal damnation on souls or Cardinal de Fleury boasting of having issued 40,000 lettres de cachet. But there are no sweeping condemnations. Although unsympathetic to the absolutism of Louis XIV’s court, he quotes approvingly the remark of Louis XIV’s grandson when declining a new piece of furniture for his house: ‘The people can get the necessities of life only when princes forbid themselves what is superfluous.’

The book which seems to have influenced Napoleon most and on which he took most notes was a French translation of John Barrow’s A New and Impartial History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Signing of Preliminaries of Peace, 1762. The French translation stopped in 1689, that is, safely before the long series of French defeats.

Napoleon’s notes on Barrow are devoid of any such chauvinism, save perhaps the very first: ‘The British Isles were probably the first peopled by Gallic colonists.’ The invasion of Caesar he skipped, probably because he already knew it well, but he copied out a long story of Offa’s repentance, and his institution of Peter’s pence. He gave much space to Alfred and to Magna Carta, noting that the Charter had been condemned by the Pope. All constitutional struggles Napoleon followed in detail, such as the arraignment of Edward II and Wat Tyler’s rebellion. At the end of Richard II’s reign Napoleon added a personal comment: ‘The principal advantage of the English Constitution consists in the fact that the national spirit is always in full vitality. For a long spell of years, the King can doubtless arrogate to himself more authority than he ought to have, may even use his great power to commit injustice, but the cries of the nation soon change to thunder, and sooner or later the King yields.’

Napoleon treated the Reformation in detail. Summing up the reign of James I, he noted with approval: ‘Parliament henceforward regained its ascendancy.’ Of Charles I Napoleon took a poor view. He made notes on Pym, the first Parliamentary demagogue, but saved his enthusiasm for Simon de Montfort and later the Protector Somerset, who had died in sterner ages to make possible the successes of Pym and Cromwell. Of Simon de Montfort he wrote: ‘There perishes one of the greatest Englishmen, and with him the hope his nation had of seeing the royal authority diminished.’

The French translation of Barrow’s history ended in 1689 with the triumph of constitutional monarchy. Barrow’s message was clear: only a constitution defending the people’s rights could check arbitrary government. In the light of this message Napoleon took a new look at the history of France. The original government of the Franks, he decided, was a democracy tempered by the power of the King and his knights. A new king was made by being lifted on a shield and acclaimed by his troops. Then bishops arrived and preached despotism. Pepin, before receiving the crown, asked permission from the Pope. Gradually the aura of kingship took hold of men’s minds, and kings usurped an authority never originally granted them. They no longer ruled in the interests of the people who had originally given them power. In October 1788 Napoleon was planning to write an essay on royal authority: he would analyse the unlawful functions exercised by kings in Europe’s dozen kingdoms. Doubtless he was thinking of Louis XVI’s power, with a stroke of the pen, to send any Frenchman to the Bastille. What was wrong with France, Napoleon decided, was that the power of the King and the King’s men had grown excessive; the reform Napoleon wanted – and the point is important in view of his future career-was a constitution which, by setting out the people’s rights, would ensure that the King acted in the interests of France as a whole.

To an impartial observer of Europe around the year 1785 the salient fact would have been the success of unconstitutional monarchies, the so-called enlightened despotisms. In Portugal, Spain and Sweden kings of this type were reforming and modernizing, while in Prussia Frederick II and in Russia Catherine II were ruling arbitrarily yet earning the epithet ‘Great’. It is interesting that Napoleon averted his gaze from these personal successes and fixed it on the odd country out – England, with her monarchy limited by law. He did so partly because he was an admirer of Rousseau, whose social contract theory derives from Locke, but even more because of his family background of respect for the law and his personal sympathy with the oppressed.

Napoleon, then, wanted reform in France. He wanted a constitutional monarchy which ruled in the interests of the people. This decision was strengthened by a new turn of events in Corsica. There the French had done an about-face. In September 1786 Marbeuf died, and the island was henceforth administered by the Ministry of Finance. A set of bureaucrats moved in, and since France was heading for bankruptcy, had orders to cut expenditure. They refused to pay subsidies due on past improvement schemes to Letizia, who found herself in financial difficulties, especially since the presence of French bureaucrats and troops had sent up the cost of living: corn doubled in price between 1771 and 1784.

Napoleon’s first reaction was to seek justice. He went to Paris in 1787 to see the man at the top, the Controller General. He specified the sum owing, but added with feeling that no sum ‘could ever compensate for the kind of debasement a man experiences when he is made aware at every moment of his subjection.’

The Ministry did not pay Letizia her money. Nor did the French hand back the Odone property, because one of the officials, a Monsieur Soviris, was an interested party. Again Napoleon took action. He wrote to the Registrar of the Corsican States-General, Laurent Giubega, who happened to be his godfather, protesting in strong language about unenergetic tribunals and offices, where the decision lies with one man, ‘a stranger not only to our language and habits but also to our legal system … envious of the luxury he has seen on the Continent and which his salary does not allow him to attain.’

Napoleon’s letter had no effect. These two cases of injustice, touching his widowed mother, changed Napoleon’s whole attitude to the French in Corsica. Formerly he had accepted their presence as beneficial; now he saw that it was oppressive. Their rule in Corsica was a particular example of the injustice inherent in the French system. That rule, he decided, must be ended and Corsica again be free.

But how? At first Napoleon did not know. ‘The present position of my country,’ meaning Corsica, he noted gloomily, ‘and the powerlessness of changing it is a new reason for fleeing this land where duty obliges me to praise men whom virtue obliges me to hate.’ It took Napoleon two years to find a way. The way was a book. He would write a History of Corsica, along the lines of Boswell’s, in order to touch the French people, to rouse their feelings of humanity. Once they knew the facts, they would demand freedom for the Corsicans.