Adam Zamoyski - Napoleon - The Man Behind the Myth

Napoleone arrived at the military academy of Brienne on 15 May 1779, three months short of his tenth birthday. The regulation kit each boy brought with him consisted of: three pairs of bed-sheets; a set of dining silver and a silver goblet, engraved with his family arms or initials; a dozen napkins; a blue coat with white metal buttons bearing the arms of the academy; two pairs of black serge breeches; twelve shirts, twelve kerchiefs, twelve white collars, six cotton caps, two dressing gowns, a hair-powder pouch and a hair ribbon. The powder and ribbon would be redundant for the first three years, as up to the age of twelve the boys wore their hair close-cropped.1

The academy occupied an inelegant sprawl of buildings in the small town of 400 people, dominated by the château of the Loménie de Brienne family (to whom Marbeuf had recommended the boy). It had some 110 pupils, about fifty of them beneficiaries of royal bursaries like Napoleone. It was an austere institution, run by friars of the Order of Minims, founded in the fifteenth century by St Francis de Paola in Calabria and dedicated to abstention and frugality, so the atmosphere was Spartan. The boys attended mass every morning and discipline was strict, although there was no corporal punishment. At night they were locked in cells furnished with a straw-filled mattress, blanket, ewer and basin. In order to teach them to do without servants, they had to look after themselves and their kit. There were no holidays, and they were only allowed home in exceptional circumstances.2

Following the defeats in the Seven Years’ War, thought to have been partly due to the dilettantism of the officers, French military thinking focused on ways of producing an officer class inured to hardship and inspired by a sense of duty. Institutions such as Brienne were not meant to provide military training; the curriculum, taught by the friars supplemented by lay teachers, included the study of Suetonius, Tacitus, Quintillian, Cicero, Horace and Virgil, and, most importantly Plutarch, whose lives of the heroes of antiquity were meant to serve as role models for the aspiring soldiers. The works of Corneille, Racine, Boileau, Bossuet, Fénelon and other French classics were to awaken in them the instincts of chivalry, honour, duty and sacrifice, as well as teaching them elocution and rhetoric. The curriculum also included German, history, geography, mathematics, physics, drawing, dancing, fencing and music.3

His new environment must have presented a challenge for the young Napoleone at many levels. He was by all accounts a puny child, showing signs of a delicate constitution. He had an olive complexion, which along with his poor French and atrocious accent marked him out as a foreigner. Corsica was seen in France at the time as a land of treacherous brigands. His outlandish first name, pronounced in the French way with the last syllable accented, ended with a sound like ‘ nez ’, leading to jibes based on the nose. Having a bursary singled him out as the son of a poor family, while his noble status was open to question, or at least mockery, from those of a higher social standing. The patronage of Marbeuf, and occasional visits to the château on Sundays, fed rumours about his mother’s morals and his own paternity. All this laid him open to teasing and bullying, which must have aggravated the homesickness he would have felt on entering this alien world and the cold, sunless climate of north-eastern France. But in boarding schools where boys are cut off from home those with character or certain gifts easily impose themselves and can achieve a status they do not have in the outside world. And Napoleone did not lack character.4

Apart from Charles-Étienne de Gudin, who became a fine general, and Étienne-Marie Champion de Nansouty, later a distinguished cavalry commander, few of Napoleone’s contemporaries at Brienne made much of their lives. Later, some could not resist laying a claim to fame by recording memories, true or invented, of their days together. Childhood reminiscences are unreliable at the best of times, and in this case should be treated with the greatest caution. Typical is the story of a snowball fight that probably took place in the winter of 1783, which assumed epic proportions in various memoirs, with Napoleone organising his colleagues into armies, building elaborate fortifications out of snow and staging assaults which supposedly revealed his tactical talents and leadership qualities.5

The concurrent image of an alienated youth drawn by such memoirists and developed by romantically-minded biographers should likewise be taken with a pinch of salt. Napoleone was capable of standing up to his schoolmates, displaying a ‘ferocity’ and even ‘fury’ born of contempt when provoked, but he did not seek their friendship. ‘I do not recollect, that he ever showed the slightest partiality in favour of any of his comrades; gloomy and fierce to excess, almost always by himself,’ recalled one of the few fellow pupils whose accounts can be trusted, ‘averse likewise to all that is called children’s plays and amusements, he never was seen to share in the noisy mirth of his school-fellows …’6

He did have friends. One was Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, whose family origins in trade may have made him less arrogant than the others. Jean-Baptiste Le Lieur de Ville sur Arce, four years older than Napoleone, recalled being drawn to him by the ‘originality’ of his character, his ‘somewhat strange’ manner and his intelligence, and the two became close. Another friend was Pierre François Laugier de Bellecour, whom Napoleone liked in spite of his frivolity. There were others with whom he was on good terms, and he also had some friends among the friars and the teachers.7

What did set Napoleone apart from his peers was his application and his intellectual curiosity. With a library at his disposal for the first time in his life, he read voraciously. The cadets were assigned small allotments of land to cultivate, and Napoleone fenced his off and planted it so as to provide himself with a place of solitude in which he could read. ‘Reserved in his temper, and wholly occupied by his own pursuits, Buonaparte courted that solitude which seemed to constitute his delight,’ recorded the librarian.8

With Napoleone at Brienne and Joseph at Autun, Carlo with a seat in the Corsican Estates and the appointment in 1779 of his uncle Luciano as archdeacon of Ajaccio cathedral, the senior clerical post in the city, the standing of the family seemed assured. But Carlo’s social ambitions bred requirements which imposed new struggles on him, and anxieties on his family. By a complicated transaction in 1779 he managed to gain sole title to most of the lease granted to his ancestor Geronimo in 1584 on the Salines, twenty-three hectares of land outside Ajaccio. Originally a salt-marsh, it had been partly drained and turned into a cherry orchard, but had reverted to an unhealthy swamp. Carlo applied for a subsidy from the French government to drain the land on grounds of public health and turn it into a nursery for mulberry trees, which, it was hoped, would be planted all over the island and provide raw silk for the French textile industry. Thanks to Marbeuf’s support, the subsidy was granted in June 1782.9

The next objective required more tortuous negotiations, in which his patron’s assistance would be even more necessary. Almost a century earlier, a great-aunt of Carlo had married an Odone, and in her dowry brought him a property which was to revert to the Buonaparte if the progeny of the union were to die out. But instead of returning the property, the last of the Odone bequeathed it to the Jesuits. When the Jesuits were expelled from France in 1764, the property devolved to the state. Carlo intended to prove that the Odone bequest was illegal, and laid claim to Les Milleli, another former Jesuit property, as compensation.10