When he was five years old, he was sent to a kindergarten kept by nuns at which he would arrive, despite his mothers care, with his clothes awry and his stockings crumpled round his ankles, holding hands with a little girl named Giacominetta. This gave rise to a verse with which the other children would taunt him, deriding him for the stockings that fell down to his ankles and for his love for Giacominetta:
Napoleone di mezza calzettaFa lamore a Giacominetta
Provoked by this, he would throw stones at his tormentors or charge at them with fists flailing.
From the kindergarten he was sent to a school for boys where he learned to read and write both French and Italian and was given lessons in arithmetic which he enjoyed and at which he excelled. In the hot summers of the holidays, his parents took their children to one or other of their farmhouses up in the hills or to a house near the sea, their mother putting them on horseback as soon as they could walk. Napoleone would be taken for rides by his aunt, Galtruda, who told him what she knew about horticulture and agriculture, showed him how to prune a vine, and pointed out to him the damage done to the olive trees by his uncle Lucianos goats. He received a different kind of instruction from his mother, who sent Giuseppe and Napoleone to bed without supper from time to time so that they should bear discomfort without protest. She also told them that although they came of noble stock, they would have to make sacrifices in order to appear before the world as a nobleman was expected to do.
When you grow up, youll be poor, she said to Napoleone one day. But its better, even if you have to live on dry bread, to have a fine room for receiving guests, a fine suit of clothes and a fine horse. She urged her children to be proud of their ancestry; and while Napoleon was always to bridle when his enemies referred to him derogatorily as the Corsican, he was not ashamed of his origins and never attempted to conceal them, though he did once say, Im not a Corsican. I was brought up in France, therefore I am French.
His mother also persuaded him to believe in destiny and the power of providence and of spirits from another world. Whenever she heard surprising, unexpected news, she would suddenly cross herself and murmur under her breath, Gesu!
Prospering as a lawyer under French rule and appointed to a seat in the Corsican States-General and to membership of the Council of Twelve Nobles, Carlo was now able to afford a nurse for the children and two maids for his wife. She felt in need of the help: another son, Luciano (Lucien, as he was to be known in France), was born when Napoleone was six years old, and, two years after this, a daughter, Maria Anna, later known as Elisa. Then there was a fourth son, Luigi (Louis), two more daughters, Maria Paula (Pauline) and Maria Annunziata (Caroline) and, lastly, a fifth son, Girolamo (Jérôme), born in 1784.
Repeated pregnancies had not spoiled their mothers good looks which were much admired by the French Governor of Corsica, Charles René, comte de Marbeuf, whose elderly wife had not accompanied him to the island and whose French mistress had returned home. He was said to be much in love with Letizia; but she, deeply religious and mindful of her duty to her husband, seems to have been content to enjoy his admiration without encouraging it, although there were those who believed they were lovers and that Luigi was his child.
Both she and her husband eagerly accepted his offer when the comte undertook not only to find places for Giuseppe and Napoleone at educational establishments in France but also, having no children of his own, to pay the necessary fees. So the brothers were sent to a good school at Autun and from there, so it was planned, Giuseppe should go to the seminary at Aix with a view to entering the church, while Napoleone should train for a career in the army at the military academy at Brienne-le-Château.
When this decision about his future was made, Napoleone was not yet nine years old; and Camilla, his former wet-nurse and still a family friend, wept to see him leave home so early. His mother displayed no such emotion. In accordance with Corsican custom, she took him and his brother Giuseppe to the Lazarists, a congregation of secular priests living under religious vows, to be blessed by the Father Superior, and then accompanied them across the high ground through Corte to the coast at Bastia to see them off on a ship bound for Marseilles. At the quayside, Napoleone seemed apprehensive: his mother bent down to kiss him and to whisper in his ear, Coraggio. It was to be many months before she saw the boy again.
It seemed that both needed courage again when Napoleon and Joseph, as they were now to be known, had to say goodbye to each other when the time came for Napoleon to leave the school at Autun to go to the military academy at Brienne. Joseph cried bitterly and, although not a single tear was seen to run down Napoleons cheek, one of the schools masters later attempted to comfort Joseph by saying to him, He didnt show it, but hes just as sad as you.
At Brienne, Napoleon was adept not only at mathematics but also at history and geography. A fellow pupil, however, said that he had no taste for the study of languages and the arts. His dancing and drawing were both described as being very poor, while his spelling was erratic. He was no good at German and he spoke inadequate French with a pronounced Corsican accent. He became renowned for a sharp temper, self-sufficiency, pride and arrogance, a rather priggish sense of decorum and a readiness to take offence. On one occasion, when he was about nine years old, having broken one of the schools rules, he was ordered to wear a dunces cap, to exchange his blue uniform for an old brown coat, and to eat his dinner on his knees by the refectory door. Outraged by this indignity, he was suddenly sick on the floor and then, stamping his foot, he refused to kneel down, crying out, Ill eat my dinner standing up. In my family we kneel only to God, only to God! Only to God!
Such outbursts naturally led to much teasing, but not, it seems, to bullying, since he was only too capable of responding furiously to provocation of that sort. When some boys, frightened by an explosion in a box of gunpowder during a display of fireworks on the Kings birthday, rushed headlong into his garden plot, his retreat from the other boys on holidays, knocking down the fence and trampling over his mulberry bushes, he attacked them and drove them off shouting threats and brandishing a hoe. To taunts about his diminutive size or his strange accent he would often react in this violent way, rushing at his tormentors, crying, Ill make you French pay for this. One of his reports described him as being, imperious and stubborn; another adverted to his lack of social graces. His only friend, Louis-Antoine de Bourrienne, who was later to become his secretary, wrote of him:
Bonaparte and I were eight years old when our friendship beganI was the only one of his youthful comrades who could accommodate themselves to his stern characterHis ardent wish to acquire knowledge was remarkable even then. When he first came to the college he spoke only the Corsican dialect and the vice-principal gave him lessons in French[He was very bad at Latin] but the facility with which he solved mathematical problems absolutely astonished me
His conversation almost always bore the appearance of ill-humour, and he was never very amiableHis temper was not improved by the teasing he frequently experienced from the other boys who were fond of ridiculing him because of his odd Christian name and his countryHe was certainly not much liked and rarely took part in the schools amusements. During play-hours he used to withdraw to work in the library where he read with deep interest books of history. I often went off to play with my friends and left him to read by himself in the library.
Bonaparte and I were eight years old when our friendship beganI was the only one of his youthful comrades who could accommodate themselves to his stern characterHis ardent wish to acquire knowledge was remarkable even then. When he first came to the college he spoke only the Corsican dialect and the vice-principal gave him lessons in French[He was very bad at Latin] but the facility with which he solved mathematical problems absolutely astonished me
His conversation almost always bore the appearance of ill-humour, and he was never very amiableHis temper was not improved by the teasing he frequently experienced from the other boys who were fond of ridiculing him because of his odd Christian name and his countryHe was certainly not much liked and rarely took part in the schools amusements. During play-hours he used to withdraw to work in the library where he read with deep interest books of history. I often went off to play with my friends and left him to read by himself in the library.
One day his parents came to see him. His father, wearing a smart, new wig, was an embarrassing sight, bowing in an extravagantly polite way when he stood aside to allow the headmaster to pass first through a door. But his mother was all that a boy a Corsican boy in an academy attended by so many French cadets from upper-class families could hope to have. Her long dark hair was tied back in a chignon and covered by a lace headdress, and her dress was of white silk with a pattern of green flowers. She was not feeling well, however, having recently suffered from puerperal fever. She still had cause to complain of intermittent pain on her left side, an ailment which her husband hoped would be alleviated by a course of the waters at Bourbonne.
She heard with dismay that Napoleon had now set his heart on going into the navy and, as a preparation for life at sea, had taken to sleeping in a hammock in his cubicle. She anxiously pointed out the twin dangers of a life at sea: the chances of being killed on board and of being drowned if thrown into the water. When she returned to Ajaccio she asked the comte de Marbeuf to do all he could to dissuade her son from fulfilling his youthful ambition.
Letizia was also worried by the state of her husbands health: he had lately lost much weight and had little appetite; he looked exhausted and his skin was discoloured by blotchy patches. Carlo was persuaded to go to Aix, then to Montpellier, to seek specialist advice. None of any use was given him: he died of cancer of the stomach in February 1785, a month before his thirty-ninth birthday, seized at the end, so Napoleon was later to say, with a passion for priests: There were not enough for him in all MontpellierHe ended his life so pious that everyone there thought him a saint.
Napoleon had by then left Brienne and, no longer set upon a career in the navy, had gone on to the École Militaire in Paris, an establishment which set almost as much store by religious observances as by military training: attendance at Mass was compulsory; so were confirmation and confession.
Napoleon was distressed to hear of his fathers death and worried that his mother, a widow with eight children, would find it hard to get by in her straitened circumstances. When someone offered to lend him money, he declined the offer with the words, My mother has too many expenses already, I must not add to them.
He was as proud and as priggish as ever, just as intolerant of criticism and of what he took to be slights to his amour propre, furious when he was made to feel foolish as, for instance, when, never having seen ice before, he demanded to know who was putting glass in his water jug.
Stories were told of his throwing his musket at the head of a senior cadet who, having noticed a mistake in Napoleons drill, had rapped him over the knuckles, and of his rejecting the overtures of a former friend, Pierre François Laugier, son of a baron, whom he had criticized for associating with young men of homosexual tendencies. Your new friends are corrupting you, he told Laugier. So make a choice between them and me. Later he said, You have scorned my advice, and you have renounced my friendship. Never speak to me again. Laugiers response was to creep up behind him and push him over, upon which Napoleon ran after him and, grabbing him by the collar, threw him to the floor on which he hit his head against a stove.
I was insulted, Napoleon told the captain on duty who came up to admonish him. I took my revenge. There is nothing more to be said. He then strode off in a manner which by then had become characteristic, his arms folded, his head bent forwards, taking long steps.
The sexual proclivities of Laugier induced Napoleon to write a paper to be sent to the Minister of War on the subject of the education of the young men of Sparta which, he thought, should be applied in the École Militaire and other French academies. He sent a draft to the headmaster of the school at Brienne who, having read it, advised him not to pursue the matter further.
A report on the Corsican cadet at the École Militaire described him as solitary, haughty, egotisticalReserved and studious, he prefers study to any kind of amusementHe enjoys reading good authors and has a sound knowledge of mathematics and geographyHe is most proud and ambitious.
5 A PROSTITUTE AND A PEST
A woman who is feared has no charm.
NAPOLEON WAS NOW SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. His relations with women had, up till now, been largely limited to those with members of his own family and their friends; and he had had little opportunity of coming across girls of his own age. On holiday in Paris, however, he saw something of the two daughters of Panoria Permon, a Corsican of Greek descent, the attractive wife of an army contractor and the mother of two young daughters, Cécile and Laure. When Napoleon was commissioned soon after his sixteenth birthday, he called at the Permons house in the Place de Conti in his new officers uniform and long black boots which looked far too big for his painfully thin legs. The girls laughed at the sight of him; and since he was obviously put out by this unwelcome reception and seemed unable then, as always, to tolerate a joke at his own expense, Cécile told him that, now he was entitled to wear an officers sword, he must use it to protect the ladies and not mind if they teased him.
Its obvious youre just a little schoolgirl, Napoleon said grumpily.
What about you? the ten-year-old girl replied. Youre just a puss-in-boots.
In an attempt to show there was no ill feeling, however, the next time he called at the house, Napoleon brought with him a copy of Puss-in-Boots for one of the sisters and, for the other, a model which he had had made, though he could ill afford it, of Puss, running in front of the carriage of his master, the marquis de Carabas. Their mockery was not forgotten, however: for years thereafter Laure Permon was known by Napoleon as his little pest and, a whole decade later, when she made some reference to the Puss-in-Boots episode, Laure said she would never forget Napoleons expression, as he came up to her to pinch her nose so hard that she cried out in pain. Youre witty, you little pest, he said, but youre malicious. Dont be that. A woman who is feared has no charm. Napoleon neither then nor later ever forgot a slight. Nor could Laure Permon ever forget the disdainful twist of his mouth when he was angry, nor yet his charm when he chose to exercise it.