The Life of Napoleon I | Page 7

With these
irreconcilables Charles Buonaparte did not cast in his lot, but accepted
the pardon offered to those who should recognize the French sway.
With his wife and their little child Joseph he returned to Ajaccio; and
there, shortly afterwards, Napoleon was born. As the patriotic historian,
Jacobi, has finely said, "The Corsican people, when exhausted by
producing martyrs to the cause of liberty, produced Napoleon
Buonaparte[5]."
Seeing that Charles Buonaparte had been an ardent adherent of Paoli,
his sudden change of front has exposed him to keen censure. He
certainly had not the grit of which heroes are made. His seems to have
been an ill-balanced nature, soon buoyed up by enthusiasms, and as
speedily depressed by their evaporation; endowed with enough of
learning and culture to be a Voltairean and write second-rate verses;
and with a talent for intrigue which sufficed to embarrass his never
very affluent fortunes. Napoleon certainly derived no world-compelling
qualities from his father: for these he was indebted to the wilder strain
which ran in his mother's blood. The father doubtless saw in the French
connection a chance of worldly advancement and of liberation from
pecuniary difficulties; for the new rulers now sought to gain over the
patrician families of the island. Many of them had resented the
dictatorship of Paoli; and they now gladly accepted the connection with
France, which promised to enrich their country and to open up a
brilliant career in the French army, where commissions were limited to
the scions of nobility.
Much may be said in excuse of Charles Buonaparte's decision, and no
one can deny that Corsica has ultimately gained much by her

connection with France. But his change of front was open to the charge
that it was prompted by self-interest rather than by philosophic
foresight. At any rate, his second son throughout his boyhood nursed a
deep resentment against his father for his desertion of the patriots'
cause. The youth's sympathies were with the peasants, whose
allegiance was not to be bought by baubles, whose constancy and
bravery long held out against the French in a hopeless guerilla warfare.
His hot Corsican blood boiled at the stories of oppression and insult
which he heard from his humbler compatriots. When, at eleven years of
age, he saw in the military college at Brienne the portrait of Choiseul,
the French Minister who had urged on the conquest of Corsica, his
passion burst forth in a torrent of imprecations against the traitor; and,
even after the death of his father in 1785, he exclaimed that he could
never forgive him for not following Paoli into exile.
What trifles seem, at times, to alter the current of human affairs! Had
his father acted thus, the young Napoleon would in all probability have
entered the military or naval service of Great Britain; he might have
shared Paoli's enthusiasm for the land of his adoption, and have
followed the Corsican hero in his enterprises against the French
Revolution, thenceforth figuring in history merely as a greater
Marlborough, crushing the military efforts of democratic France, and
luring England into a career of Continental conquest. Monarchy and
aristocracy would have gone unchallenged, except within the "natural
limits" of France; and the other nations, never shaken to their inmost
depths, would have dragged on their old inert fragmentary existence.
The decision of Charles Buonaparte altered the destiny of Europe. He
determined that his eldest boy, Joseph, should enter the Church, and
that Napoleon should be a soldier. His perception of the characters of
his boys was correct. An anecdote, for which the elder brother is
responsible, throws a flood of light on their temperaments. The master
of their school arranged a mimic combat for his pupils--Romans against
Carthaginians. Joseph, as the elder was ranged under the banner of
Rome, while Napoleon was told off among the Carthaginians; but,
piqued at being chosen for the losing side, the child fretted, begged,
and stormed until the less bellicose Joseph agreed to change places

with his exacting junior. The incident is prophetic of much in the later
history of the family.
Its imperial future was opened up by the deft complaisance now shown
by Charles Buonaparte. The reward for his speedy submission to
France was soon forthcoming. The French commander in Corsica used
his influence to secure the admission of the young Napoleon to the
military school of Brienne in Champagne; and as the father was able to
satisfy the authorities not only that he was without fortune, but also that
his family had been noble for four generations, Napoleon was admitted
to this school to be educated at the charges of the King of France (April,
1779). He was now, at the tender age of nine, a stranger in a strange
land, among a people whom he detested as