CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHTAT THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL

The Bonaparte boys and their father stopped a while in Florence, so that Charles Bonaparte could procure the proper papers to prove that he was of what is called noble birth. For it seems that only the children of nobles could enter the French military school at Brienne.

He procured these at last, and also a letter of introduction to the French queen, Marie Antoinette whose sad story you all know so well.

Then they set out for Autun, and reached that quaint old town on the last day of the year 1778. On New Year's Day, 1779, Napoleon was entered as a pupil in the preparatory school at Autun.

Autun has been a school town tor hundreds of years. The old Druids had a school there, and so did the Romans. It is one of the oldest of French towns; and you will find it on your map of France, about one hundred and fifty miles south-east of Paris. It is a picturesque old town, placed on a sloping hillside, that runs down to the Arroux River. There is a cathedral in the town over nine hundred years old; and there, too, Napoleon found a college and a seminary, a museum and a library, with plenty of ruins, walls, and gateways, and such things, that told of its great age and old-time grandeur.

It was a fine place in which to go to school, and the Bonaparte boys must have found it quite a change from their Corsican home. The bishop of Autun, who had charge of the cathedral and the schools, was the nephew of a friend of Charles Bonaparte, and he promised to look after the boys.

Napoleon did not stay long in the school at Autun. His father went to Paris to enter upon his duties as delegate to the Assembly, intending, while there, to make arrangements for getting Napoleon into the military school at Brienne.

But there was much need of the preparatory work at Autun. For you must know that, being a Corsican, Napoleon knew scarcely a word of French. The Corsicans speak Italian, and this would never do for a French schoolboy. So, for three months, Napoleon was drilled in French.

He did not take kindly to it. But he did his best. For, you see, his journey from Florence to Marseilles, and on to Autun, had opened his eyes. He saw, for the first time, cities larger than Ajaccio, and learned that there were other places in the world besides Corsica.

But he never really lost his Ajaccio tongue, and for most of his life he talked French with an Italian accent.

It was a queer-looking little Italian boy who was thus studying French at Autun school. You would scarcely have looked at him twice; for his figure was small, his appearance insignificant, his face sober and solemn, his hair stiff and stringy, and his complexion sallow. The boys made fun of the way in which he talked, as boys are apt to make sport of those who do not talk as they do.

"What is your name, new boy?" the big boy of Autun school called out to Napoleon, as on that first day of the new year, which was, as I have said, his first day at school, the Bonaparte brothers wandered about the schoolyard, strangers and shy.

"Na-polle-o-nay!" answered the little new-comer, giving the Corsican pronunciation to his name of Napoleon.

"Oho! so!" cried the big boy, mimicking him. "Na-pailli-au-nez, is it? See, fellows, see! this is Mr. Straw-Nose!"

For, you see, the way Napoleon pronounced his name sounded very much like the French words that mean "the nose of straw." That, of course, gave the boys at the school a rare chance to nickname; and so poor Napoleon was called "Mr. Straw-Nose" all the time he was at that school.

This was not very long, however; for in three months he had made sufficient progress in his study of French to permit him to pass into the military school at Brienne, into which his father was at last able to procure his admission.

But, while he was at Autun, Napoleon seems to have been a favorite with his teachers. One of them, the Abbé Chardon, spoke of him as "a sober, thoughtful child." He wished very much to get into the military school; so he worked hard, learned quickly, and was proud of what he called his ability.

But when the boys tried to plague him, or to twit him for being a Corsican, the boy was ready enough to talk back.

The French boys knew but little about Corsica, and had a certain contempt for the little island which, so they declared, was the home of robbers, and which France had one day gone across and conquered.

"Bah, Corsican!" one of the big boys called out to the new scholar, "and what is Corsica? Just an island of cowards. Just see how we Frenchmen whipped you out of your boots!"

Napoleon clinched his little fist, and turned hotly on his tormentor. But he was already learning the lesson of self-control.

"And how did you do it, Frenchman?" he replied. "By numbers. If you had been but four to one against us, you would never have conquered us. But, behold! you were ten to one! That is too much to struggle against."

"And yet you boast of your general—your leader," said the other boy. "You say he is a fine commander—this—how do you call him?—this Paoli."

"I say so; yes, sir," Napoleon replied sadly. Then, as if his ambition led him on, he added, "I would like to be like him. What could I not do then!"

This feeling of being a Corsican, an outsider at the school, made the boy quiet and retiring. He kept by himself, just as he had at home when things did not suit him; he walked out alone, and played with no one. To be sure, he was more or less with his brother Joseph, who loved his ease and comfort, did not fire up when the other boys teased him, and smoothed over many a quarrel between them and his brother.

Napoleon would often find fault with Joseph's lack of spirit, as he called it; but Joseph, all through life, liked to take things easy, and hated to face trouble. Most of us do, you know; but it was the readiness of Napoleon to boldly face danger, and to attempt what appeared to be the impossible, that made him the self-reliant boy, the successful man, the conqueror, the emperor, the hero.

CHAPTER NINETHE LONELY SCHOOL-BOY

While Napoleon was at Autun school, studying French, and preparing for entrance into the military academy, his father, Charles Bonaparte, was at Versailles, trying to get a little more money from the king, in return for his services as Corsica's delegate to France.

At the same time he was working to complete the arrangements which should permit him to enter Napoleon at the military school, at the expense of the state. This he finally accomplished; and on the twenty-third of April, in the year 1779, Napoleon entered the royal military school at Brienne.

There were ten of these military schools in France. They were started as training-schools for boys who were to become officers in the French army. The one at Brienne was a bare and ugly-looking lot of buildings in the midst of trees and gardens, looking down toward the little River Aube, and near to the fine old chateau, or nobleman's house, built, a hundred years before Napoleon's day, by the last Count of Brienne.

There were a hundred and fifty boys at Brienne school, although there was scarcely room enough for a hundred and twenty.

The new-comer was therefore crowded in with the others; and you may be sure that the old boys did not make life pleasant and easy for the new boy.

Although he had learned to write and speak French during his three months' schooling at Autun, he could not, of course, speak it very well; so the boys plagued him for that. And when he told them his name, they, too, made fun of his pronunciation of Na-po-le-one, and at once nicknamed him, "straw-nose," just as the Autun boys had done.

Most of the boys who attended Brienne school were the sons of French noblemen. They had plenty of money to spend; they made a show of it, and dressed and did things as finely as they could. Napoleon, you know, was poor. His father had scrimped and begged and borrowed to send his boys to school. He could not, therefore, give them much for themselves; so the French boys, with the money to spend and the manners to show, made no end of fun of the little Corsican, who had neither money nor manners.

At once he got into trouble. He did not like, nor did he understand, the ways of the French boys; he was alone; he was homesick; and naturally he became sulky and uncompanionable. When the boys teased him, he tossed back a wrathful answer; when they made fun of his appearance, he grew angry and sullen; and when they tried to force him into their society, he went off by himself, and acted like a little hermit.

But when they twitted him on his nationality, called him "Straw-nose, the Corsican," and made all manner of fun of that rocky and (as they called it) savage island, then all the patriotism in the boy's nature was aroused, and he called his tormentors French cowards, with whom he would one day get square.

"Bah, Corsican! and what will you do?" asked Peter Bouquet. "I hope some day to give Corsica her liberty," said Napoleon; "and then all Frenchmen shall march into the sea."

Upon which all the boys laughed loudly; and Napoleon, walking off in disgust, went into the school-building, and there vented his wrath upon a portrait of Choiseul, that hung upon the wall.

"Ah, ha! blackguard, pawnbroker, traitor!" he cried, shaking his fist at this portrait of a stout and smiling-looking gentleman. "I loathe you! I despise you! I spit upon you!" And he did.

Now, Monsieur the Count de Choiseul was the French nobleman who was one of the old King Louis's ministers and advisers. It was he who had planned the conquest of Corsica, and annexed it to France. You may not wonder, then, that the little Corsican, homesick for his native island, and hot with rage toward those who made fun of it, when he came upon this portrait of the man to whom, as he had been taught, all Corsica's troubles were due, should have vented his wrath upon it, and heaped insults upon it.

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Unfortunately for him, however, the teachers at Brienne did not appreciate his patriotic wrath; so, when one of the tattle-tales reported Napoleon's actions, at once he was pounced upon, and ordered to ask pardon for what he had said and done, standing before the portrait of Corsica's enslaver.

He approached the portrait so reluctantly and contemptuously, that one of the teachers scolded him sharply.

"You are not worthy to be a French officer, foolish boy," the teacher declared; "you are no true son of France, thus to insult so great and noble a Frenchman as Monsieur the Count de Choiseul."

"I am a son of Corsica," Napoleon replied proudly; "that noble country which this man ground in the dust."

"As well he might," replied the teacher tauntingly. "He was Corsica's best friend. He was worth a thousand Paoli's."

"It is not so!" cried Napoleon, hot with patriotic indignation. "You talk like all Frenchmen. Paoli was a great man. He loved his country. I admire him. I wish to be like him. I can never forgive my father for having been willing to desert the cause of Corsica, and agree to its union with France. He should have followed Paoli's lead, even though it took him with Paoli, into exile in England."

"Bah! your father!" one of the big boys standing by exclaimed; "and who is your father, Straw-nose?"

Napoleon turned upon his tormentor; "a better man than you, Frenchman!" he cried; "a better man than this Choiseul here. My father is a Corsican."

"A stubborn rebel, this boy," said the teacher, now losing his temper. "What! you will not ask Monsieur the Count's pardon, as a rebel should? Then will we tame your spirit. Is a little arrogant Corsican to defy all France, and Brienne school besides? Go, sir! We will devise some fine punishment for you, that shall well repay your insolence and disobedience."

So Napoleon, in disgrace, left the schoolroom, and pacing down his favorite walk, the pleasant avenue of chestnut-trees that lined the path from one of the schoolhouse doors, he sought his one retreat and hermitage,—his loved and bravely defended garden.

That garden was a regular Napoleonic idea. I must tell you about it.

CHAPTER TENIN NAPOLEON'S GARDEN

One of the rules of Brienne school was that each pupil should know something about agriculture. To illustrate this study, each one of the one hundred and fifty boys had a little garden-spot set aside for him to cultivate and keep in order.

Some of the boys did this from choice, and because they loved to watch things grow; but many of them were careless, and had no love for fruit or flowers; so while some of the garden-plots were well kept, others were neglected.

Napoleon was glad of this garden-plot, for it gave him something which he could call his own. He cared for it faithfully; but he wished to make it even more secluded. He remembered his dear grotto at Ajaccio, and studied over a plan to make his garden-plot just such a real retreat. But it was not large enough for this. He looked about him. The boys to whom belonged the garden-plots on either side of him were careless and neglectful. Their gardens received no attention; they were overgrown with weeds; their hedges were full of gaps and holes.

"I will take them," said Napoleon; "what one cannot care for, another must."

So the boy went systematically to work to "annex" his neighbors' kingdoms, and make from the three plots one ample retreat for himself. He cut down the separating borders; he trimmed and trained and filled in the stout outside hedge, until it completely surrounded his enlarged domain; and, in the centre of the paths and flower-beds and hedges, he put up a seat and a little summer-bower for his pleasure and protection.

It took some time to get this into shape, of course. When he had completed it, and was beginning to enjoy it, the owners of the plots he had confiscated awoke to a sense of their loss and the excellent garden-spot this young Corsican had made for them. "For of course," they said, "the garden-plots are ours. Straw Nose has improved them at his own risk. What he has made we will keep for our own pleasure." So they attempted to occupy their property; but with Napoleon there was force in the old saying, "Possession is nine points of the law."

When the dispossessed boys demanded their property, he refused it; when they spoke of their rights, he laughed at them; and when they attempted to enter the garden by force, he fell upon them, drove them flying from the field, and pommelled them so soundly that they judged discretion to be the better part of valor, and made no further attempt to disturb the conqueror.

The other boys did attempt it, however, simply to tease and annoy the fiery Corsican. But it always resulted in their own damage; for Napoleon become so attached to his garden citadel, that he would grow furiously angry whenever he was disturbed. Rushing out, he would rout his assailants completely; until at last it was understood that it was safest to let him alone.

As he sought his garden on this day of disgrace to which I have referred, he was full of bitter thoughts against the unfriendly boys and the unsympathetic teachers amid whom his lot was cast. Like most boys, he determined to do something that should free him from this tyranny; then, like many boys, he decided to run away. Where or how he could go he did not know; for he had no friends in France who would help him along, and he had no money in his pocket to enable him to help himself.

"I will run away to sea," he said. For the sea, you know, is the first thought of boys who determine to be runaways.

But Napoleon had a strong love for his family; he held high notions in regard to the honor of the family name; above all else, he was determined to do something that should help his family out of its sore straits, and become one element of its support.

"If I should run away to sea," he thought, "I should bring discredit and shame to my family: I should annoy my father, and seriously interfere with my own plans. For, should I run away from Brienne, my father, who has been at such pains to place me here, would be distressed, and perhaps injured. No; I will brave it out. But I will write to my father, asking him to take me away, and place me in some school where I shall feel less like an outcast, where poverty would not be held as a crime, and where I shall have more agreeable surroundings. So he went into his garden fortress; he stretched himself at full length on his bench, and, using the cover of his favorite book, Plutarch's "Lives," as a desk, he wrote this letter to his father:—

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"MY FATHER,—If you or my protectors cannot give me the means of sustaining myself more honorably in the house where I am, please summon me home, and as soon as possible. I am tired of poverty, and of the smiles of the insolent scholars who are superior to me only in their fortune; for there is not one among them who feels one-hundredth part of the noble sentiments by which I am animated. Must your son, sir, continually be the butt of these boobies, who, vain of the luxuries which they enjoy, insult me with their laughter at the privations I am forced to endure? No, father; No! If fortune refuses to smile upon me, take me from Brienne, and make me, if you will, a mechanic. From these words you may judge of my despair. This letter, sir, please believe, is not dictated by a vain desire to enjoy expensive amusements. I have no such wish. I feel simply that it is necessary to show my companions that I can procure them as well as they, if I wish to do so.

"Your respectful and affectionate son,

"BONAPARTE."

It took some time to write this letter; for, with Napoleon, letter-writing was always a detested task.

When he had written and directed it, he felt better. We always do feel relieved, you know, if we speak out or write down our feelings. Then he read a chapter in Plutarch about Alexander the Great. This set him to thinking and planning how he would win a battle if he should ever become a leader and commander. He had a notion that he knew just what he would do; and, to prove that his plan was good, he threw himself on the garden walk, and gathering a lot of pebbles, he began to set them in array, as if they were soldiers, and to make all the moves and marches and counter-marches of a furious battle. He indicated the generals and chief officers in this army of stone by the larger pebbles; and you may be sure that the largest pebble of all represented the commander-in-chief—and that was Napoleon himself.

As he marshalled his pebble army, under the lead of his generals and officers, shifting some, advancing others, rearranging certain of them in squares, and massing others as if to resist an attack, Napoleon was conscious of a snickering sort of laugh from somewhere above him.

He looked up, and caught sight of a mocking face looking down at him from the top of the hedge that bordered his garden.

"Ho, ho! Straw-nose!" the spy cried out; "and what is the baby doing? Is it playing with the pretty pebbles? Is it making mud-pies? It was a sweet child, so it was."

Napoleon flushed with anger, enraged both at the intrusion and the teasing.

"Pig! imbecile!" he cried; "get down from my hedge, or I will make you!"

"Ho! hear the infant!" came back the taunting answer. "He will make me—this pretty Corsican baby who plays with pebbles. He will make me! That is good! I laugh; I—Oh, help! help! the Corsican has killed me!"

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For a moment Napoleon thought indeed he had; for a moment, too, I am afraid, he did not care. For so enraged was he at the boy's insults and actions, that he had caught up his biggest pebble, which happened to be Napoleon the general, and flung it at the intruder. It struck him squarely between the eyes, and so stunned him that he fell back from the hedge, and lay, first howling, and then terribly quiet, in the space outside Napoleon's garden. At once there was a hue and cry; Napoleon was summoned from his retreat, and dragged before his teacher.

"Ah, miserable one!" cried the master. "And is it you again? You have perhaps killed your fellow-student. You will yet end in the Bastille, or on the block. Take him away, until we see what shall be the result of the last ill-doing of this wicked one."

"When one plays the spy and the bully one must expect retribution," said Napoleon loftily. "This Bouquet is a rascal who will be more likely to end in the Bastille than I, who did but defend my own."

This language, of course, did not help matters; so into the school-cage, or punishment "lock-up" for the school-boy offenders, young Napoleon was at once hurried, without an opportunity for explanation or protest.

CHAPTER ELEVENFRIENDS AND FOES

Napoleon, the prisoner in the school "lock-up," raged for a while like a caged lion. Then he calmed down into the sulks, returned to his determination to run away, concluded again that he would go to sea, thought of his family and his duties once more, and at last concluded to take his punishment without a word, though he knew that the boy who had mocked him into anger deserved the punishment fully as much as did he who had been the insulted one.

"But then," he reasoned, "he paid well for his taunts and teasing. I wonder how he is now?"

His schoolmate, the English boy, Lawley, was on duty outside the "lock-up" door, as a sort of monitor.

"Say, you Lawley!" Napoleon called out, "and how is that brute of a Bouquet?"

"None the better for seeing you, little one," replied the good-natured English boy, who had that love of fair play that is supposed to belong to all Englishmen, and, therefore, felt that young Bonaparte was suffering unjustly. Then he added:

"Bouquet will no doubt die, and then what will you do?"

"I will plead self-defence, my friend," said Napoleon. "Did not you tell me that an English judge did once declare that a man's home was his castle, which he was pledged to defend from invasion and assault. What else is my garden? That brute of a Bouquet came spying about my castle, and I did but defend myself. Is it not so?"

"It may be so to you, young Bonaparte," Lawley replied; "but not to your judges. No, little one, you're in for it now; they'll make you smart for this, whatever happens to old Bouquet."

For, like all English boys, this young Lawley mingled with his love of justice an equal love for teasing: and like most of the boys at Brienne school, he declared it to be "great fun to get the little Corsican mad."

"Then must you help me to get away from here," Napoleon declared. "Look you, Lawley!" and the boy in great secrecy pulled a paper from his pocket; "see now what I have written."

The English boy took the paper, ran his eye over it, and laughed as loudly as he dared while on duty.

"My eye!" he said, "it's in English, and pretty fair English too. A letter to the British Admiralty? Permission to enter the British navy as a midshipman, eh? Well, you Bonaparte, you are a cool one. A Frenchman in the British navy! Fancy now!"

"No, sir; a Corsican," replied Napoleon. "Why should it not be so? What have I received but scorn and insult from these Frenchmen? You English are more fair, and England is the friend of Corsica. Why should I not become a midshipman in your navy? The only difficulty, I am afraid, will be my religion."

"Your religion!" cried Lawley, with a laugh; "why, you young rascal! I don't believe you have any religion at all."

"But my family have," Napoleon protested. "My mother's race, the Ramolini" (and the boy rolled out the name as if that respectable farmer family were dukes or emperors at least), "are very strict. I should be disinherited if I showed any signs of becoming a heretic like you English; and if I joined the British navy, would I not be compelled to become a heretic, like you, Lawley?"

Lawley burst into such a loud laugh over the boy's religious scruples, of which he had never before seen evidence, that he aroused one of the teachers with his noise, and had to scud away, for fear of being caught, and punished for neglect of duty.

But he kept Napoleon's letter of application. He must have sent it, either in fun, or with some desire to befriend this badgered Corsican boy; for to-day Napoleon's letter still exists in the crowded English department, wherein are filed the archives of the British Admiralty.

At last, by the interest of certain of the friends whom the boy's misfortune, if not his pluck, had made for him—such lads as Lawley, the English boy, Bourrienne, Lauriston, and Father Patrault, the teacher of mathematics,—Napoleon was liberated with a reprimand; while the boy who had caused all the trouble went unpunished, save for the headache that Napoleon's well-aimed stone had given him and the scar the blow had left.

But the boy could not long stay out of trouble. The next time it came about, friendship, and not vindictiveness, was the cause.

Napoleon did not forget the good offices of his friends. Indeed, Napoleon never forgot a benefit. His final fall from his great power came, largely, because of the very men whom he had honored and enriched, out of friendship or appreciation for services performed in his behalf.

One day young Lauriston, who was on duty as a sort of sentry in the chestnut avenue that was one of Napoleon's favorite walks, left his post, and joining Napoleon, begged him to help him in a problem in mathematics which he had been too lazy or too stupid to solve.

"We will go to your garden, Straw-nose," said Lauriston; for both friend and foe, after the manner of boys, used the nicknames that had by common consent been fastened upon their schoolfellows.

"We will not, then," Napoleon returned. For, as you know, his garden was sacred, and not even his friends were allowed entrance. "See, we will go beyond, to the seat under the big chestnut. But are you not on duty here?"

Lauriston snapped his fingers and shrugged his shoulders in contempt of duty. "That for duty!" he exclaimed. "My duty now is to get out this pig of a problem."

Under the big chestnut, which was another of Napoleon's favorite resorts, the two boys put their heads together over Lauriston's problem, and it was soon made clear to the lad; for Napoleon was always good at mathematics.

But the time spent over the problem exhausted Lauriston's limit of duty; and when the teacher came to relieve him at his post, the boy was nowhere to be seen.

Now, at Brienne, military instruction was on military rules; and no crime against military discipline is much greater than "absence without leave."

So when, at last, young Lauriston was found in Napoleon's company, away from his post of duty, and beneath the big chestnut-tree, the boy was in a "pretty mess." But Napoleon never deserted his friends.

"Sir," he said to the teacher, "the fault is mine. I led young Lauriston away to"—he stopped: it would scarcely help his friend's cause to say that he had been helping him at his lessons; thus he continued, "to show him my lists"—which was not an untruth, for he had shown the copy to Lauriston.

"Your lists, unruly one," said the teacher—one of Napoleon's chief persecutors. "And what lists, pray?"

"My lists of the possessions of England, here in my copy-book," said Napoleon, drawing the badly scrawled blank-book from his pocket.

He handed it to the teacher.

"Ah, what handwriting! It is vilely done, young Bonaparte. Even I can scarcely read it," he said. "What is this? You would draw my portrait in your copy-book? Wretched one! have you no manners? So! Possessions of the English, is it? Would that the English possessed you! None then would be happier than I." Thereupon the teacher read through the list, making sarcastic comments on each entry, until he came to the end. "'Cabo Corso in Guinea, a pretty strong fort on the sea side of Fort Royal, a defence of sixteen cannons.' Bad spelling, worse writing, this! and the last, 'Saint Helena, a little island;' and where might it be, that Saint Helena, young Bonaparte?"

"In the South Atlantic, well off the African coast," replied Napoleon.

"Would you were there too, young malcontent!" said the teacher, "luring boys from their duty. This is worse than treason. See! you shall to the lockup once more. And you are no longer battalion captain."

Young Lauriston would have protested against this injustice, and declared that he was at fault; but, like too many boys under similar circumstances, he was afraid, and accepted anything that should save him from punishment. Moreover, a glance at Napoleon's masterful eyes held his tongue mute, and he saw his friend borne away to the punishment that should have been his.

"'Tis Saint Helena's fault, and not yours, my Lauriston," Napoleon whispered in his ear. "Bad writing is never forgiven."

So, as if in a prophecy of the future, Napoleon suffered unjust disgrace in connection with Saint Helena's name; and to-day, in the splendid exhibition-room of the historical library at Florence, jealously guarded beneath a glass case, is Napoleon's blue paper copybook, the very last line of which reads, by the strangest of all strange coincidences, "Saint Helena, a little island."

The boy's willingness to suffer for his friends, and, even more than this, the unjust taking away of his office in the school battalion, of which he was quite proud, turned the tide in young Napoleon's favor, so far as his schoolmates were concerned.

"Little Straw-nose is a plucky one, is he not, though?" the boys declared; and when he came on the field again, they welcomed him with cheers, and made him leader for the day in their sports.

They had great fun. Napoleon, full of his readings in Plutarch's "Lives," divided the boys into two camps; one camp was to be the Persians, the other the Greeks and Macedonians. Napoleon, of course, was Alexander; and, like the great Macedonian, he wrought such havoc on the Persians, that the school hall in which the battle was waged was filled with the uproar, and all the teachers at Brienne rushed pell-mell to the place, to quell what they were certain must be a school riot, led on by "that miserable Corsican."

Day by day, however, "that miserable Corsican" made more and more friends among his schoolfellows. For boys grow tired at last of plaguing one who has both spirit and pluck; and these Napoleon certainly possessed. He had come to the school "a little savage," so the polished French boys declared.

"I was in Brienne," he said years afterwards, as he thought over his school-days, "the poorest of all my schoolfellows. They always had money in their pockets; I, never. I was proud, and was most careful that nobody should perceive this. I could neither laugh nor amuse myself like the others. I was not one of them. I could not be popular."

004n.jpg (96K)Napoleon at the School of Brienne (From the Painting by M R Dumas)]

Napoleon at the School of Brienne (From the Painting by M R Dumas)]

So he had to go through the same hard training that other poor boys at boarding-school have undergone. He, however was petulant, high-spirited, proud, and had something of that Corsican love of retaliation that has made that rocky island famous for its feuds and family rows, or "vendettas" as they are called.

He showed the boys at last that they could not impose upon him; that he had plenty of spirit; that he was kind-hearted to those who showed themselves friendly; and, above all, that he was fitted to lead them in their sports, and could, in fact, help them toward having a jolly good time.

So, gradually, they began to side with and follow him. They left him in undisturbed possession of his fortified garden, they asked his help over hard points in mathematics, until at last he began even to grow a little popular. And then, to crown all, came the great Snow-ball Fight.

CHAPTER TWELVETHE GREAT SNOW-BALL FIGHT AT BRIENNE SCHOOL

That Snow-ball Fight is now famous. It was in the winter of 1783. Snow fell heavily; drifts piled up in the schoolyard at Brienne. The schoolboys marvelled and exclaimed; for such a snow-fall was rare in France. Then they began to shiver and grumble. They shivered at the cold, to which they were not accustomed; they grumbled at the snow which, by covering their playground, kept them from their usual out-of-door sports, and held them for a time prisoners within the dark schoolrooms.

Suddenly Napoleon had an inspiration.

"What is snow for, my brothers," he exclaimed, "if not to be used? Let us use it. What say you to a snow fort and a siege? Who will join me?"

It was a novel idea; and, with all the boyish love for something new and exciting, the boys of Brienne entered into the plan at once. "The fort, the fort, young Straw-nose!" they cried. "Show us what to do! Let us build it at once!"

With Napoleon as director, they straightway set to work. The boy had an excellent head for such things; and his mathematical knowledge, together with the preparatory study in fortifications he had already pursued in the school, did him good service.

He was not satisfied with simply piling up mounds of snow. He built regular works on a scientific plan. The snow "packed well," and the boys worked like beavers. With spades and brooms and hands and homemade wooden shovels, they built under Napoleon's directions a snow fort that set all Brienne wondering and admiring. There were intrenchments and redoubts, bastions and ramparts, and all the parts and divisions and defences that make up a real fort.

It took some days to build this wonderful fort. For the boys could only work in their hours of recess. But at last, when all was ready, Napoleon divided the schoolboys into two unequal portions. The smaller number was to hold the fort as defenders; the larger number was to form the besieging force. At the head of the besiegers was Napoleon. Who was captain of the fort I do not know. His name has not come down to us.

But the story of the Snow-ball Fight has. For days the battle raged. At every recess hour the forces gathered for the exciting sport. The rule was that when once the fort was captured, the besiegers were to become its possessors, and were, in turn, to defend it from its late occupants, who were now the attacking army, increased to the required number by certain of the less skilful fighters in the successful army.

Napoleon was in his element. He was an impetuous leader; but he was skilful too; he never lost his head.

005n.jpg (138K)["As leader of the storming-party he would direct the attack"]

["As leader of the storming-party he would direct the attack"]

Again and again, as leader of the storming-party, he would direct the attack; and at just the right moment, in the face of a shower of snow-balls, he would dash from his post of observation, head the assaulting army, and scaling the walls with the fire of victory in his eye and the shout of encouragement on his lips, would lead his soldiers over the ramparts, and with a last dash drive the defeated defenders out from the fortification.

The snow held for nearly ten days; the fight kept up as long as the snow walls, often repaired and strengthened, would hold together.

The thaw, that relentless enemy of all snow sports, came to the attack at last, and gradually dismantled the fortifications; snow for ammunition grew thin and poor, and gravel became more and more a part of the snow-ball manufacture.

Napoleon tried to prevent this, for he knew the danger from such missiles. But often, in the heat of battle, his commands were disregarded. One boy especially—the same Bouquet who had scaled his hedge and brought him into trouble—was careless or vindictive in this matter.

On the last day of the snow, Napoleon saw young Bouquet packing snow-balls with dirt and gravel, and commanded him to stop. But Bouquet only flung out a hot "I won't!" at the commander, and launched his gravel snow-ball against the decaying fort.

Napoleon was just about to head the grand assault. "To the rear with you! to the rear, Bouquet! You are disqualified!" he cried.

But Bouquet was insubordinate. He did not intend to be cheated out of his fun by any orders that "Straw-nose" should give him. Instead of obeying his commander, he sang out a contemptuous refusal, and dashed ahead, as if to supplant his general in the post of leader of the assault.

Napoleon had no patience with disobedience. The insubordination and insolence of Bouquet angered him; and darting forward, he collared his rebellious subordinate, and flung him backward down the slushy rampart.

"Imbecile!" he cried. "Learn to obey! Drag him to the rear, Lauriston."

The fort was carried. But "General Thaw" was too strong for the young soldiers; and that night, a rain setting in, finished the destruction of the now historic snow-fort of Brienne School.

Bouquet, smarting under what he considered the disgrace that had been put upon him before his playmates, accosted Napoleon that night in the hall. "Bah, then, smarty Straw-nose!" he cried; "you are a beast. How dare you lay hands on me, a Frenchman?"

"Because you would not obey orders," Napoleon replied. "Was not I in command?"

"You!" sneered Bouquet; "and who are you to command? A runaway Corsican, a brigand, and the son of a brigand, like all Corsicans."

"My father is not a brigand," returned Napoleon. "He is a gentleman—which you are not."

"I am no gentleman, say you?" cried the enraged French boy. "Why, young Straw-nose, my ancestors were gentlemen under great King Louis when yours were tending sheep on your Corsican hills. My father is an officer of France; yours is"—

"Well, sir, and what is mine?" said Napoleon defiantly.

"Yours," Bouquet laughed with a mocking and cruel sneer, "yours is but a lackey, a beggar in livery, a miserable tip-staff!"

Napoleon flung himself at the insulter of his father in a fury; but he was caught back by those standing by, and saved from the disgrace of again breaking the rules by fighting in the school-hall.

All night, however, he brooded over Bouquet's taunting words, and the desire for revenge grew hot within him.

The boy had said his father was no gentleman. No gentleman, indeed! Bouquet should see that he knew how gentlemen should act. He would not fall upon him, and beat him as he deserved. He would conduct himself as all gentlemen did. He would challenge to a duel the insulter of his father.

This was the custom. The refuge of all gentlemen who felt themselves insulted, disgraced, or persecuted in those days, was to seek vengeance in a personal encounter with deadly weapons, called a duel. It is a foolish and savage way of seeking redress; but even today it is resorted to by those who feel themselves ill treated by their "equals." So Napoleon felt that he was doing the only wise and gentlemanly thing possible.

But, even then duelling was against the law. It was punished when men were caught at it; for schoolboys, it was considered an unheard-of crime.

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