William Sloane - The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4)

But there are facts of greater weight on the other side. In the first place, the documentary evidence is itself of equal value, for the archives of the French war department also contain an extract from the one original baptismal certificate, which is dated July twenty-first, 1771, the day of the baptism, and gives the date of Napoleone's birth as August fifteenth, 1769. Charles's application for the appointment of his two eldest boys to Brienne has also been found, and it contains, according to regulation, still another copy from the original certificate, which is dated June twenty-third, 1776, and also gives what must be accepted as the correct date. This explodes the story that Napoleon's age was falsified by his father in order to obtain admittance for him to the military school. The application was made in 1776 for both boys, so as to secure admission for each before the end of his tenth year. It was the delay of the authorities in granting the request which, after the lapse of three years or more, made Joseph ineligible. The father could have had no motive in 1776 to perpetrate a fraud, and after that date it was impossible, for the papers were not in his hands; moreover, the minister of war wrote in 1778 that the name of the elder Buonaparte boy had already been withdrawn. That charge was made during Napoleon's lifetime. His brother Joseph positively denied it, and asserted the fact as it is now substantially proved to be; Bourrienne, who had known his Emperor as a child of nine, was of like opinion; Napoleon himself, in an autograph paper still existing, and written in the handwriting of his youth, thrice gives the date of his birth as August fifteenth, 1769. If the substitution occurred, it must have been in early infancy. Besides, we know why Napoleon at marriage sought to appear older than he was, and Joseph's contract was written when the misstatement in it was valuable as making him appear thoroughly French.

Among other absurd efforts to besmirch Napoleon's character is the oft-repeated insinuation that he fixed his birthday on the greatest high festival of the Roman Church, that of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, in order to assure its perpetual celebration! In sober fact the researches of indefatigable antiquaries have brought to light not only the documentary evidence referred to, but likewise the circumstance that Napoleon, in one paper spelled Lapulion, was a not uncommon Corsican name borne by several distinguished men, and that in the early generation of the Buonaparte family the boys had been named Joseph, Napoleon, and Lucien as they followed one another into the world. In the eighteenth century spelling was scarcely more fixed than in the sixteenth. Nor in the walk of life to which the Buonapartes belonged was the fixity of names as rigid then as it later became. There were three Maria-Annas in the family first and last, one of whom was afterward called Elisa.

As to the form of the name Napoleon, there is a curious though unimportant confusion. We have already seen the forms Nabulione, Nabulion, Napoleone, Napoleon. Contemporary documents give also the form Napoloeone, and his marriage certificate uses Napolione. On the Vendôme Column stands Napolio. Imp., which might be read either Napolioni Imperatori or Napolio Imperatori. In either case we have indications of a new form, Napolion or Napolius. The latter, which was more probably intended, would seem to be an attempt to recall Neopolus, a recognized saint's name. The absence of the name Napoleon from the calendar of the Latin Church was considered a serious reproach to its bearer by those who hated him, and their incessant taunts stung him. In youth his constant retort was that there were many saints and only three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. In after years he had the matter remedied, and the French Catholics for a time celebrated a St. Napoleon's day with proper ceremonies, among which was the singing of a hymn composed to celebrate the power and virtues of the holy man for whom it was named. The irreverent school-boys of Autun and Brienne gave the nickname "straw nose"—paille-au-nez—to both the brothers. The pronunciation, therefore, was probably as uncertain as the form, Napaille-au-nez being probably a distortion of Napouilloné. The chameleon-like character of the name corresponds exactly to the chameleon-like character of the times, the man, and the lands of his birth and of his adoption. The Corsican noble and French royalist was Napoleone de Buonaparté; the Corsican republican and patriot was Napoléone Buonaparté; the French republican, Napoléon Buonaparte; the victorious general, Bonaparte; the emperor, Napoléon. There was likewise a change in this person's handwriting analogous to the change in his nationality and opinions. It was probably to conceal a most defective knowledge of French that the adoptive Frenchman, as republican, consul, and emperor, abandoned the fairly legible hand of his youth, and recurred to the atrocious one of his childhood, continuing always to use it after his definite choice of a country.

Stormy indeed were his nation and his birthtime. He himself said: "I was born while my country was dying. Thirty thousand French, vomited on our shores, drowning the throne of liberty in waves of blood—such was the horrid sight which first met my view. The cries of the dying, the groans of the oppressed, tears of despair, surrounded my cradle at my birth."

These were the words he used in 1789, while still a Corsican in feeling, when addressing Paoli. They strain chronology for the sake of rhetorical effect, but they truthfully picture the circumstances under which he was conceived. Among many others of a similar character there is a late myth which recalls in detail that when the pains of parturition seized his mother she was at mass, and that she reached her chamber just in time to deposit, on a carpet or a piece of embroidery representing the young Achilles, the prodigy bursting so impetuously into the world. By the man himself his nature was always represented as the product of his hour, and this he considered a sufficient excuse for any line of conduct he chose to follow. When in banishment at Longwood, and on his death-bed, he recalled the circumstances of his childhood in conversations with the attendant physician, a Corsican like himself. "Nothing awed me; I feared no one. I struck one, I scratched another, I was a terror to everybody. It was my brother Joseph with whom I had most to do; he was beaten, bitten, scolded, and I had put the blame on him almost before he knew what he was about; was telling tales about him almost before he could collect his wits. I had to be quick: my mama Letizia would have restrained my warlike temper; she would not have put up with my defiant petulance. Her tenderness was severe, meting out punishment and reward with equal justice; merit and demerit, she took both into account."

Of his earliest education he said at the same time: "Like everything else in Corsica, it was pitiful." Lucien Buonaparte, his great-uncle, was a canon, a man of substance with an income of five thousand livres a year, and of some education—sufficient, at least, to permit his further ecclesiastical advancement. "Uncle" Fesch, whose father had received the good education of a Protestant Swiss boy, and had in turn imparted his knowledge to his own son, was the friend and older playmate of the turbulent little Buonaparte. The child learned a few notions of Bible history, and, doubtless, also the catechism, from the canon; by his eleven-year-old uncle he was taught his alphabet. In his sixth year he was sent to a dame's school. The boys teased him because his stockings were always down over his shoes, and for his devotion to the girls, one named Giacominetta especially. He met their taunts with blows, using sticks, bricks, or any handy weapon.

According to his own story, he was fearless in the face of superior numbers, however large. His mother, according to his brother Joseph, declared that he was a perfect imp of a child. She herself described him as fond of playing at war with a drum, wooden sword, and files of toy soldiers. The pious nuns who taught him recognized a certain gift for figures in styling him their little mathematician. Later when in attendance at the Jesuit school he regularly encountered on his way thither a soldier with whom he exchanged his own piece of white bread for a morsel of the other's coarse commissary loaf. The excuse he gave, according to his mother, was that he must learn to like such food if he were to be a soldier. In time his passion for the simple mathematics he studied increased to such a degree that she assigned him a rough shed in the rear of their home as a refuge from the disturbing noise of the family. For exercise he walked the streets at nightfall with tumbled hair and disordered clothes. Of French he knew not a word; he had lessons at school in his mother tongue, which he learned to read under the instruction of the Abbé Recco. The worthy teacher arrayed his boys in two bodies: the diligent under the victorious standard of Rome, the idle as vanquished Carthaginians. Napoleon of right belonged to the latter, but he was transferred, not because of merit, by the sheer force of his imperious temper.