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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
Napoleon's Studies Continued at Auxonne—Another Illness and a Furlough—His Scheme of Corsican Liberation—His Appearance at Twenty—His Attainments and Character—His Shifty Conduct—The Homeward Journey—New Parties in Corsica—Salicetti and the Nationalists—Napoleon Becomes a Political Agitator and Leader of the Radicals—The National Assembly Incorporates Corsica with France and Grants Amnesty to Paoli—Momentary Joy of the Corsican Patriots—The French Assembly Ridicules Genoa's Protest—Napoleon's Plan for Corsican Administration.
1789–90.
Such were the events taking place in the great world while Buonaparte was at Auxonne. That town, as had been expected, was most uneasy, and on July nineteenth, 1789, there was an actual outbreak of violence, directed there, as elsewhere, against the tax-receivers. The riot was easily suppressed, and for some weeks yet, the regular round of studious monotony in the young lieutenant's life was not disturbed except as his poverty made his asceticism more rigorous. "I have no other resource but work," he wrote to his mother; "I dress but once in eight days [Sunday parade?]; I sleep but little since my illness; it is incredible. I retire at ten, and rise at four in the morning. I take but one meal a day, at three; that is good for my health."
More bad news came from Corsica. The starving patriot fell seriously ill, and for a time his life hung in the balance. On August eighth he was at last sufficiently restored to travel, and applied for a six-months' furlough, to begin immediately. Under the regulations, in