Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica

J >> John Kendrick Bangs >> Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

This etext was produced from the 1902 Harper and Brothers edition by
David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

MR. BONAPARTE OF CORSICA

by John Kendrick Bangs

CHAPTER I: CORSICA TO BRIENNE
1769-1779

Napoleon's father, Charles Bonaparte, was the honored progenitor of
thirteen children, of whom the man who subsequently became the
Emperor of the French, by some curious provision of fate, was the
second. That the infant Napoleon should have followed rather than
led the procession is so foreign to the nature of the man that many
worthy persons unfamiliar with the true facts of history have
believed that Joseph was a purely apocryphal infant, or, as some have
suggested, merely an adopted child; but that Napoleon did upon this
occasion content himself with second place is an incontrovertible
fact. Nor is it entirely unaccountable. It is hardly to be supposed
that a true military genius, such as Napoleon is universally conceded
to have been, would plunge into the midst of a great battle without
first having acquainted himself with the possibilities of the future.
A reconnoitre of the field of action is the first duty of a
successful commander; and hence it was that Napoleon, not wishing to
rush wholly unprepared into the battle of life, assigned to his
brother Joseph the arduous task of first entering into the world to
see how the land lay. Joseph having found everything to his
satisfaction, Napoleon made his appearance in the little island of
Corsica, recently come under French domination the 15th day August,
1769. Had he been born two months earlier, we are told, he would
have been an Italian. Had he been born a hundred years later, it is
difficult to say what he would have been. As it was, he was born a
Frenchman. It is not pleasant to contemplate what the man's future
would have been had he been born an Italian, nor is it easy to
picture that future with any confidence born of certainty. Since the
days of Caesar, Italy had not produced any great military commander,
and it is not likely that the powers would have changed their scheme,
confirmed by sixteen centuries of observance, in Napoleon's behalf--a
fact which Napoleon himself realized, for he often said in his latter
days, with a shudder: "I hate to think how inglorious I should have
become had I been born two months earlier and entered the world as an
Italian. I should have been another Joseph--not that Joseph is not a
good man, but he is not a great man. Ah! Bourrienne, we cannot be
too careful in the selection of our birthdays."

It is the testimony of all who knew him in his infancy that Napoleon
was a good child. He was obedient and respectful to his mother, and
sometimes at night when, on account of some indigestible quality of
his food or other cause, it was necessary for his father to make a
series of forced marches up and down the spacious nursery in the
beautiful home at Ajaccio, holding the infant warrior in his arms,
certain premonitions of his son's future career dawned upon the
parent. His anguish was voiced in commanding tones; his wails, like
his subsequent addresses to his soldiers, were short, sharp, clear,
and decisive, nor would he brook the slightest halt in these midnight
marches until the difficulties which stood in his path had been
overcome. His confidence in himself at this early period was
remarkable. Quick to make up his mind, he was tenacious of his
purpose to the very end.

It is related that when barely seven months old, while sitting in his
nurse's lap, by means of signs which she could not fail to
comprehend, he expressed the desire, which, indeed, is characteristic
of most healthy Children of that age, to possess the whole of the
outside world, not to mention the moon and other celestial bodies.
Reaching his little hands out in the direction of the Continent,
lying not far distant over the waters of the Mediterranean, he made
this demand; and while, of course, his desire was not granted upon
the instant, it is the testimony of history that he never lost sight
of that cherished object.

After providing Napoleon with eleven other brothers and sisters,
Charles Bonaparte died, and left his good and faithful wife Letitia
to care for the future greatness of his family, a task rendered
somewhat the more arduous than it might otherwise have been by the
lack of income; but the good woman, who had much of Napoleon's nature
in her make-up, was equal to the occasion. She had her sons to help
her, and was constantly buoyed up by the expressed determination of
her second child to place her beyond the reach of want in that future
day when the whole world lay grovelling at his feet.

"Do not worry, mother," Napoleon said. "Let Joseph and Lucien and
Louis and Jerome and the girls be educated; as for me, I can take
care of myself. I, who at the age of three have mastered the Italian
language, have a future before me. I will go to France, and then--"

"Well! what then?" his mother asked.

"Nous verrons!" Napoleon replied, turning on his heel and walking out
of the house whistling a military march.

From this it will be seen that even in his in fancy Napoleon had his
ideas as to his future course. Another anecdote, which is taken from
the unpublished memoirs of the grandson of one of his Corsican
nurses, illustrates in an equally vivid manner how, while a mere
infant in arms, he had a passion for and a knowledge of military
terms. Early one morning the silence was broken by the incipient
Emperor calling loudly for assistance. His nurse, rushing to him,
discovered that the point of a pin was sticking into his back.
Hastily removing the cause of the disturbance, she endeavored to
comfort him:

"Never mind, sweetheart," she said, "it's only a nasty pin."

"Nasty pin!" roared Napoleon. "By the revered name of Paoli, I swear
I thought it was a bayonet!"

It was, no doubt, this early realization of the conspicuous part he
was to play in the history of his time that made the youthful
Bonaparte reserved of manner, gloomy, and taciturn, and prone to
irritability. He felt within him the germ of future greatness, and
so became impatient of restraint. He completely dominated the
household. Joseph, his elder brother, became entirely subject to the
imperious will of the future Emperor; and when in fancy Napoleon
dreamed of those battles to come, Joseph was always summoned to take
an active part in the imaginary fight. Now he was the bridge of
Lodi, and, lying flat on his back, was forced to permit his
bloodthirsty brother to gallop across him, shouting words of
inspiration to a band of imaginary followers; again he was forced to
pose as a snow-clad Alp for Napoleon to climb, followed laboriously
by Lucien and Jerome and the other children. It cannot be supposed
that this was always pleasing to Joseph, but he never faltered when
the demand was made that he should act, because he did not dare.

"You bring up the girls, mother," Napoleon had said. "Leave the boys
to me and I'll make kings of them all, if I have to send them over to
the United States, where all men will soon be potentates, and their
rulers merely servants--chosen to do their bidding."

Once, Joseph venturing to assert himself as the eldest son, Napoleon
smiled grimly.

"And what, pray, does that mean?" he asked, scornfully.

"That I and not you am the head of the family," replied Joseph.

"Very well," said Napoleon, rushing behind him, and, by a rapidly
conceived flank movement, giving Joseph a good sound kick. "How does
the head of the family like the foot of the family? Don't ever prate
of accidents of birth to me."

From that time on Joseph never murmured again, but obeyed blindly his
brother's slightest behest. He would have permitted Napoleon to mow
him down with grape-shot without complaint rather than rebel and
incur the wrath which he knew would then fall upon his head.

At school the same defiance of restraint and contempt for superior
strength characterized Napoleon. Here, too, his taciturn nature
helped him much. If he were asked a question which he could not
answer, he would decline to speak, so that his instructors were
unable to state whether or not he was in ignorance as to the point
under discussion, and could mark him down conscientiously as
contumelious only. Hence it was that he stood well in his studies,
but was never remarkable for deportment. His favorite plaything,
barring his brother Joseph, was a small brass cannon that weighed
some thirty odd pounds, and which is still to be seen on the island
of Corsica. Of this he once said: "I'd rather hear its report than
listen to a German band; though if I could get them both playing at
the same time there'd be one German band less in the world."

This remark found its parallel later on when, placed by Barras in
command of the defenders of the Convention against the attacks of the
Sectionists, Napoleon was asked the chairman of the Assembly to send
them occasional reports as to how matters progressed. His reply was
terse.

"Legislators," he said, "you ask me for an occasional report. If you
listen you will hear the report of my cannon. That is all you'll
get, and it will be all you need. I am here. I will save you."

"It is a poor time for jokes," said a representative.

"It is a worse time for paper reports," retorted Napoleon. "It would
take me longer to write out a legislative report than it will to
clean out the mob. Besides, I want it understood at this end of my
career that autograph-hunters are going to get left."

As he turned, Barras asked him as to his intentions.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"To make a noise in the world," cried Napoleon; "au revoir."

That he had implanted in him the essential elements of a great
fighter his school-companions were not long in finding out.

When not more than five years of age he fell in love with a little
schoolmate, and, being jeered at for his openly avowed sentiments, he
threatened to thrash the whole school, adding to the little maiden
that he would thrash her as well unless she returned his love, a line
of argument which completely won her heart, particularly in view of
the fact that he proved his sincerity by fulfilling that part of his
assumed obligations which referred to the subjugation of the rest of
the school. It was upon this occasion that in reference to his
carelessness of dress, his schoolmates composed the rhyme,

"Napoleon di mezza calzetta
Fa l'amore a Giacominetta."

which, liberally translated, means,

"Hi! Look at Nap! His socks down of his shin,
Is making love to little Giacomin."

To this Napoleon, on the authority of the Memoirs of his Father's
Hired Man, retorted:

"I would advise you, be not indiscreet,
Or I will yank YOUR socks right of your feet."

All of which goes to show that at no time in his youth was he to be
trifled with. In poetry or a pitched battle he was quite equal to
any emergency, and his companions were not long in finding it out.

So passed the infancy of Mr. Bonaparte, of Corsica. It was, after
all, much like the extreme youth of most other children. In
everything he undertook he was facile princeps, and in nothing that
he said or did is there evidence that he failed to appreciate what
lay before him. A visitor to the family once ventured the remark, "I
am sorry, Napoleon, for you little Corsicans. You have no Fourth of
July or Guy Fawkes Day to celebrate."

"Oh, as for that," said Napoleon, "I for one do not mind. I will
make national holidays when I get to be a man, and at present I can
get along without them. What's the use of Fourth of July when you
can shoot off fireworks everyday?"

It was a pertinent question, the visitor departed much impressed with
the boy's precocity, which was rendered doubly memorable by
Napoleon's humor in discharging fifteen pounds of wadding from his
cannon into the visitor's back as he went out of the front gate.

At the age of six Napoleon put aside all infantile pleasures, and at
eight assumed all the dignity of that age. He announced his
intention to cease playing war with his brother Joseph.

"I am no longer a child, Joseph," he said; "I shall no longer thrash
you in play. Here-after I shall do it in sober earnest."

Which no doubt is why, in 1779, Napoleon having stuck faithfully to
his promise, Joseph heartily seconded his younger brother's demand
that he should leave Corsica and take a course of military
instruction at Brienne.

"I shall no doubt miss my dear brother Napoleon," Joseph said to his
mother; "but I would not stand in the way of his advancement. Let
him go, even though by his departure I am deprived of all opportunity
to assist him in his pleasing games of war."

CHAPTER II: BRIENNE
1779-1785

As we have seen, the young Corsican was only ten years of age when,
through the influence of Count Marboeuf, an old friend of the
Bonaparte family, he was admitted to the military school at Brienne.
Those who were present at the hour of his departure from home say
that Napoleon would have wept like any other child had he yielded to
the impulses of his heart, and had be not detected a smile of
satisfaction upon the lips of his brother Joseph. It was this smile
that drove all tender emotions from his breast. Taking Joseph to one
side, he requested to know the cause of his mirth.

"I was thinking of something funny," said Joseph, paling slightly as
he observed the stern expression of Napoleon's face.

"Oh, indeed," said Napoleon; "and what was that something? I'd like
to smile myself."

"H'm!--ah--why," faltered Joseph, "it may not strike you as funny,
you know. What is a joke for one man is apt to be a serious matter
for another, particularly when that other is of a taciturn and
irritable disposition."

"Very likely," said Napoleon, dryly; "and sometimes what is a joke
for the man of mirth is likewise in the end a serious matter for that
same humorous person. This may turn out to be the case in the
present emergency. What was the joke? If I do not find it a
humorous joke, I'll give you a parting caress which you won't forget
in a hurry."

"I was only thinking," said Joseph, uneasily, "that it is a very good
thing for that little ferry-boat you are going away on that you are
going on it."

Here Joseph smiled weakly, but Napoleon was grim as ever.

"Well," he said, impatiently, "what of that?"

"Why," returned Joseph, "it seemed to me that such a tireless little
worker as the boat is would find it very restful to take a Nap."

For an instant Napoleon was silent.

"Joseph," said he, as he gazed solemnly out of the window, "I thank
you from the bottom of my heart for this. I had had regrets at
leaving home. A moment ago I was ready to break down for the sorrow
of parting from my favorite Alp, from my home, from my mother, and my
little brass cannon; but now--now I can go with a heart steeled
against emotion. If you are going in for humor of that kind, I'm
glad I'm going away. Farewell."

With this, picking Joseph up in his arms and concealing him beneath
the sofa cushions, Napoleon imprinted a kiss upon his mother's cheek,
rushed aboard the craft that was to bear him to fame, and was soon
but a memory in the little house at Ajaccio. "Parting is such sweet
sorrow," murmured Joseph, as he watched the little vessel bounding
over the turquoise waters of the imprisoned sea. "I shall miss him;
but there are those who wax fat on grief, and, if I know myself, I am
of that brand."

Arrived at Paris, Napoleon was naturally awe-stricken by the
splendors of that wonderful city.

"I shall never forget the first sight I had of Paris," he said, years
later, when speaking of his boyhood to Madame Junot, with whom he was
enjoying a tete-a-tete in the palace at Versailles. "I wondered if I
hadn't died of sea-sickness on the way over, as I had several times
wished I might, and got to heaven. I didn't know how like the other
place it was at that time, you see. It was like an enchanted land, a
World's Fair forever, and the prices I had to pay for things quite
carried out the World's Fair idea. They were enormous. Weary with
walking, for instance, I hired a fiacre and drove about the city for
an hour, and it cost me fifty francs; but I fell in with pleasant
enough people, one of whom gave me a ten-franc ticket entitling me to
a seat on a park bench--for five francs."

Madame Junot laughed.

"And yet they claim that bunco is a purely American institution," she
said.

"Dame!" cried Napoleon, rising from the throne, and walking excitedly
up and down the palace floor, "I never realized until this moment
that I had been swindled! Bourrienne, send Fouche to me. I remember
the man distinctly, and if he lives he has yet to die."

Calming down, he walked to Madame Junot's side, and, taking her by
the hand, continued:

"And then the theatres! What revelations of delight they were! I
used to go to the Theatre Francais whenever I could sneak away and
had the money to seat me with the gods in the galleries. Bernhardt
was then playing juvenile parts, and Coquelin had not been heard of.
Ah! my dear Madame Junot," he added, giving her ear a delicate pinch,
"those were the days when life seemed worth the living--when one of a
taciturn nature and prone to irritability could find real pleasure in
existence. Oh to be unknown again!"

And then, Madame Junot's husband having entered the room, the Emperor
once more relapsed into a moody silence.

But to return to Brienne. Napoleon soon found that there is a gulf
measurable by no calculable distance between existence as the
dominating force of a family and life as a new boy at a boarding-
school. He found his position reversed, and he began for the first
time in his life to appreciate the virtues of his brother Joseph. He
who had been the victorious general crossing the Alps now found
himself the Alp, with a dozen victorious generals crossing him; he
who had been the gunner was now the target, and his present inability
to express his feelings in language which his tormentors could
understand, for he had not yet mastered the French tongue, kept him
in a state of being which may well be termed volcanic.

"I simply raged within in those days," Napoleon once said to Las
Casas. "I could have swallowed my food raw and it would have been
cooked on its way down, I boiled so. They took me for a snow-clad
Alp, when, as a matter of fact, I was a small Vesuvius, with a
temperature that would have made Tabasco sauce seem like iced water
by contrast."

His treatment at the hands of his fellow-students did much to
increase his irritability, but he kept himself well in hand, biding
the time when he could repay their insults with interest. They
jeered him because he was short--short of stature and short of funds;
they twitted him on being an alien, calling him an Italian, and
asking him why he did not seek out a position in the street-cleaning
bureau instead of endeavoring to associate with gentlemen. To this
the boy made a spirited reply.

"I am fitting myself for that," he said. "I'll sweep your Parisian
streets some day, and some of you particles will go with the rest of
the dust before my broom."

He little guessed how prophetic were these words.

Again, they tormented Napoleon on being the son of a lawyer, and
asked him who his tailor was, and whether or not his garments were
the lost suits of his father's clients, the result of which was that,
though born of an aristocratic family, the boy became a pronounced
Republican, and swore eternal enmity to the high-born. Another
result of this attitude towards him was that he retired from the
companionship of all save his books, and he became intimate with
Homer and Ossian and Plutarch--familiar with the rise and fall of
emperors and empires. Challenged to fight a duel with one of his
classmates for a supposititious insult, he accepted, and, having the
choice in weapons, chose an examination in mathematics, the one first
failing in a demonstration to blow his brains out. "That is the
safer for you," he said to his adversary. "You are sure to lose; but
the after-effects will not be fatal, because you have no brains to
blow out, so you can blow out a candle instead."

Whatever came of the duel we are not informed; but it is to be
presumed that it did not result fatally for young Bonaparte, for he
lived many years after the incident, as most of our readers are
probably aware. Had he not done so, this biography would have had to
stop here, and countless readers of our own day would have been
deprived of much entertaining fiction that is even now being
scattered broadcast over the world with Napoleon as its hero. His
love of books combined with his fondness for military life was never
more beautifully expressed than when he wrote to his mother: "With
my sword at my side and my Homer in my pocket, I hope to carve my way
through the world."

The beauty and simplicity of this statement is not at all affected by
Joseph's flippant suggestion that by this Napoleon probably meant
that he would read his enemies to sleep with his Homer, and then use
his sword to cut their heads off. Joseph, as we have already seen,
had been completely subjugated by his younger brother, and it is not
to be wondered at, perhaps, that, with his younger brother at a safe
distance, he should manifest some jealousy, and affect to treat his
sentiments with an unwarranted levity.

For Napoleon's self-imposed solitude everything at Brienne arranged
itself propitiously. Each of the students was provided with a small
patch of ground which he could do with as he pleased, and Napoleon's
use of his allotted share was characteristic. He converted it into a
fortified garden, surrounded by trees and palisades.

"Now I can mope in peace," he said--and he did.

It has been supposed by historians that it was here that Napoleon did
all of his thinking, mapping out his future career, and some of them
have told us what he thought. He dreamed of future glory always, one
of them states; but whether upon the authority of a palisade or a
tiger-lily is not mentioned. Others have given us his soliloquies as
he passed to and fro in this little retreat alone, and heard only by
the stars at night; but for ourselves, we must be accurate, and it is
due to the reader at this point that we should confess--having no
stars in our confidence--our entire ignorance as to what Napoleon
Bonaparte said, did, or thought when sitting in solitude in his
fortified bower; though if our candid impression is desired we have
no hesitation in saying that we believe him to have been in Paris
enjoying the sights of the great city during those periods of
solitude. Boys are boys in all lands, and a knowledge of that
peculiar species of human beings, the boarding-school boy, is
convincing that, given a prospect of five or six hours of
uninterrupted solitude, no youth of proper spirit would fail to avail
himself of the opportunities thus offered to see life, particularly
with a city like Paris within easy "hooky" distance.

It must also be remembered that the French had at this time abolished
the hereafter, along with the idea of a Deity and all pertaining
thereto, so that there was nothing beyond a purely temporal
discipline and lack of funds to interfere with Bonaparte's enjoyment
of all the pleasures which Paris could give. Of temporal discipline
he need have had no fear, since, it was perforce relaxed while he was
master of his solitude; as for the lack of funds, history has shown
that this never interfered with the fulfilment of Napoleon's hopes,
and hence the belief that the beautiful pictures, drawn by historians
and painted by masters of the brush, of Napoleon in solitude should
be revised to include a few accessories, drawn from such portions of
Parisian life as will readily suggest themselves.

In his studies, however, Napoleon ranked high. His mathematical
abilities were so marked that it was stated that he could square the
circle with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back.

"The only circle I could not square at that time," said he, "was the
family circle, being insufficiently provided with income to do so. I
might have succeeded better had not Joseph's appetite grown too fast
for the strength of my pocket; that was the only respect, however, in
which I ever had any difficulty in keeping up with my dear elder
brother." It was here, too, that he learned the inestimably
important military fact that the shortest distance between two points
is in a straight line; and that he had fully mastered that fact was
often painfully evident to such of his schoolmates as seemed to force
him to measure with his right arm the distance between his shoulder
and the ends of their noses. Nor was he utterly without wit. Asked
by a cribbing comrade in examination what a corollary was, Napoleon
scornfully whispered back:

"A mathematical camel with two humps."

In German only was he deficient, much to the irritation of his
instructor.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8