Napoleon

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Napoleon
Vincent Cronin

First published in 1971, Vincent Cronin’s classic biography of Napoleon is now available as an ebook for the first time.‘I wanted to find a Napoleon I could picture as a living, breathing man.’Vincent Cronin superbly realises his objectives in this, probably the finest of all modern biographies of Napoleon. It is generally regarded as the author’s masterpiece.This edition does not include illustrations.

NAPOLEON

Vincent Cronin

Dedication (#ubbe118b0-8503-56e1-a71e-5cee53dc0321)

FOR

CHANTAL

Contents

COVER (#u7a011e2e-3acd-5fde-b90c-0954d4789741)

TITLE PAGE (#ue6a46eba-a144-59d0-9268-81c2ee0ec4e6)

DEDICATION (#u9c914461-ef9a-5e63-bdcd-b44b9bd688f7)

PREFACE (#u9cb59834-ada7-5bfe-a533-53b0aeb3dbb7)

1. A Happy Childhood (#u8607461d-08b4-570a-8600-d51049392795)

2. Military Academies (#u97147541-6de4-5870-aa50-9ba82ac7570b)

3. The Young Reformer (#ua9ffc8e0-2093-5146-bed9-b74eed1e3497)

4. Failure in Corsica (#u9daf16c1-fe10-58db-8ceb-66e731d9ec11)

5. Saving the Revolution (#ub15d1f53-061c-5b67-9b90-61226043eac9)

6. In Love (#udc9ffc0d-7ef5-507c-a982-589cf5139dfb)

7. Josephine (#u27f5f4f5-d532-5998-80a2-5b65a9f95957)

8. The Italian Campaign (#ua932324d-3fe3-5f29-aa4b-558723f6c2b5)

9. Fruits of Victory (#u81d089cf-abba-51d5-bd7f-db3cfabc98a4)

10. Beyond the Pyramids (#uf84fc820-715a-50c2-b915-909232225f06)

11. A New Constitution (#u65dc5ee6-7bcb-53a7-a6dc-af3c3d25fa9b)

12. The First Consul (#u1625bae6-0f56-580c-8127-75f3048ad92e)

13. Rebuilding France (#u111b4e2a-d358-543b-92b7-c393ba4e9080)

14. Opening the Churches (#u903dbc46-cf2f-5315-b471-cd483da449f4)

15. Peace or War? (#u247665c6-f187-5370-8772-1e63a151bd8a)

16. Emperor of the French (#ud38fa86a-bd05-5442-b86a-325cc0892d0e)

17. Napoleon’s Empire (#u2502429e-d8e4-5c1a-b341-c34961280e24)

18. Friends and Enemies (#u51975d9e-41de-5d3a-b49c-16f626909851)

19. The Empire Style (#ud658a60c-5c65-5d83-9ba0-c5b477251209)

20. The Road to Moscow (#u8fac305e-f6cf-5fc1-bedf-15d44b5b3651)

21. Retreat (#u6ce86d96-d4d5-527c-8026-0199edb5964d)

22. Collapse (#u7396bb5b-f655-5314-ab68-927bb6d7ba1f)

23. Abdication (#u12545008-ec01-5913-8a91-f9ca05502460)

24. Sovereign of Elba (#ua32883f4-aea1-5564-8e02-93c45b8acc59)

25. A Hundred and Thirty-Six Days (#udd77aebe-bf17-5fe2-8b60-9aab294dad1f)

26. The Last Battle (#ua4fbfbfc-3839-5edc-8587-d0f1340bbb49)

27. The End (#uc1d22cea-e1ba-5fc3-a8de-309fda035bac)

APPENDIX A: Memoir-Writers and Napoleon (#u770c0f62-b722-59f0-af4c-60c169d1cae8)

APPENDIX B: ‘Clisson et Eugénie’ (#ud6445a78-afac-50d5-b1e1-2546daf49691)

SOURCES AND NOTES (#ue9cf4442-1026-58b0-98b8-406870b0eb07)

INDEX (#udeb6372c-aa06-536c-beb3-fe72ff20cd2d)

KEEP READING (#ud86c1b34-9d30-57e1-9749-ebaf51043832)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#ub7374bfa-fa4d-5d59-83df-6f3a1dec010e)

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR (#u6f0cd338-009a-5cd1-8fd2-02d29e4a94f9)

COPYRIGHT (#u3fa708d0-20a7-59fd-9329-c2493e2dbf45)

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#uab1fb0c4-4f81-512e-a7d3-39fe2b4a4d97)

Preface (#ulink_e8023a61-1c03-5a66-a183-12b54401b950)

WHEN Napoleon first set foot on the deck of an English warship, he watched the sailors heaving the anchor up and setting the sails, and he remarked how much quieter the ship was than a French ship. Six times quieter, he reckoned. The book that follows is quieter than most books about Napoleon in the sense that there is less gunfire. It is a biography of Napoleon, not a history of the Napoleonic period, and biography, I believe, should deal with events that throw light on character. Not all Napoleon’s battles do that, and Napoleon himself declared that on the battlefield he counted for no more than half: ‘It is the army that wins the battle.’

But why a new biography at all? For two reasons. First, since 1951 new material has come to light of great importance, not in the sense that it adds fresh details here and there, but because it obliges us to take a fundamentally new look at Napoleon the man. This material is: the Notebooks of Alexandre des Mazis, Napoleon’s closest friend in his youth, Napoleon’s letters to Désirée Clary, the first woman in his life, the Memoirs of Louis Marchand, Napoleon’s valet, and General Bertrand’s Boswellian St Helena diary. None of this, save the last part of Bertrand, has been published in England. Also important is the long-missing central section of Napoleon’s autobiographical story, ‘Clisson et Eugénie’, into which a frustrated young officer of twenty-five poured his aspirations, and which is here published for the first time.

The second reason is more personal. There are in existence a large number of Lives of Napoleon and, though it will sound presumptuous, I was dissatisfied with their picture of Napoleon. I could not find a living, breathing man. Always to my mind there were glaring contradictions of character. To take one example from many, biographers repeat Napoleon’s phrase: ‘Friendship is only a word. I love no man.’ But at the same time it was obvious from their own pages that Napoleon had many close friends, more I reckon than any ruler of France, and that he was as fond of them as they were of him. Many of the biographers were evidently embarrassed by this seeming contradiction, and they tried to explain it by saying that Napoleon was different from other men: ‘Napoleon was a monster of egoism,’ or ‘Napoleon was a monster of insincerity.’

I for one do not believe in monsters. I wanted, as I say, to find a Napoleon I could picture as a living, breathing man. I knew of course that widely divergent opinions were only to be expected about Napoleon’s public life, but about the facts of his personal life there was no reason to expect divergency. So I began to look at the sources. I found that a surprising number of the sources generally used were, to say the least, of dubious value. Napoleon’s phrase, ‘Friendship is only a word’, occurs only in the Memoirs of Bourrienne, Napoleon’s former secretary. Now Bourrienne embezzled half a million francs from Napoleon, had to be posted abroad, where he embezzled a further 2 million, and finally had to be dismissed the service. After Napoleon’s fall he rallied to the Bourbons, but again had to be dismissed for dishonesty. In order to help pay his debts he decided to publish his Memoirs. Bourrienne did not write them, though; he only supplied notes for part of them, and these were then ‘ghosted’ by a journalist favourable to the Bourbons. Shortly after publication Bourrienne had to be shut up in a lunatic asylum. Immediately after his Memoirs appeared a group of men in a position to know published a book of 720 pages entirely devoted to correcting Bourrienne’s errors of fact. That admittedly is an extreme example but there are eight other Memoirs which no jury in an English court of law would accept as fair evidence; yet these have been drawn on again and again by biographers.

As I continued my critical evaluation of sources – which appears as Appendix A – I was able to clear up many of the contradictions that had puzzled me. But in the process I found that I had to modify my previous opinion of Napoleon. Different qualities, different defects began to emerge, and it was then that I decided to try to write a new Life of Napoleon, one of the first to be based on a critical evaluation of sources, which would also combine the new material I have spoken about earlier. It would be more concerned with civil than with military matters, because Napoleon himself gave more time to civil matters. Even as a second lieutenant Napoleon cared more about social improvements at home than conquests abroad, and though circumstances caused him to fight during most of his reign, he always insisted that he was primarily a statesman. In describing Napoleon’s constructive work, and even his thwarted intentions, I have drawn wherever possible on the diaries or Memoirs of the men who knew him best: such as Desaix in Italy, Roerderer during the Consulate, Caulaincourt during the last years of Empire.

Napoleon once dreamed he was being devoured by a bear. That, and two other dreams – one about drowning, the other about Josephine – are all we know about his dream life. But Napoleon was, among other things, a bookworm. During his leisure moments, whether at Malmaison or on campaign, he could usually be found deep in a book, and we know exactly which books and plays moved him. These I discuss in some detail, believing that, like dreams, they throw light on his longings and fears.

I have used the following manuscripts in public collections: in the Bibliothèque Thiers the rich collection formed by Frédéric Masson, including the journal of Dr James Verling, who lived in Longwood from July, 1818 to September, 1819, and the unexpurgated copy of Gourgaud’s diary: both provide valuable details about Napoleon’s health and morale; in the Institut de France, the Cuvier papers, which show how Napoleon organized education; in the Public Record Office, Lowe’s dispatches to Lord Bathurst and the Foreign Office papers relating to Switzerland, which clarify the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens; in the British Museum, two short Napoleon autographs; the Windham Papers, which show how closely the English ruling class was involved with French émigrés; the Liverpool Papers, particularly Add. MS. 38,569, the volume of cipher letters from Drake, in Munich, to Hawkesbury, keeping him abreast of the plot to overthrow Napoleon; and the diary and reports of Captain Nicholls in St Helena.

A word about spelling. I have followed English usage in omitting the accents from Napoleon, Josephine and Jerome, and the hyphen from double Christian names, such as Marie Louise. For places in France I have used French spelling; for places elsewhere I have adopted English versions.

I wish to thank for their generous help Dr Frank G. Healey, Dr Paul Arrighi, Monsieur Etienne Leca, Conservateur of the Bibliothèque Municipale in Ajaccio, Monsieur J. Leblanc of the Musée d’Ajaccio, Mr Nigel Samuel, who kindly allowed me to use his manuscript of part of ‘Clisson et Eugénie’, Madame L. Hautecoeur of the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Mademoiselle Hélène Michaud of the Bibliothèque Thiers, Miss Banner of the Royal College of Music, Mrs Barbara Lowe, who typed the book, and, for a number of Napoleonic details, my friend Mr Basil Rooke-Ley.

CHAPTER 1 A Happy Childhood (#ulink_a98234ec-3fa7-5e96-be46-262b360df6cc)

ON the morning of 2 June 1764 the bronze bells of Ajaccio cathedral began to peal and the little town’s important people – landowners, army officers, judges and notaries – with their ladies in silk dresses, climbed the five steps leading to the sober-fronted cathedral, passed through the doorway, and took their places for the most fashionable wedding of the year. Carlo Buonaparte of Ajaccio, a tall, slim lawyer aged eighteen, was marrying the beautiful fourteen-year-old Letizia Ramolino, also of Ajaccio. As everyone knew, it was a love match. Carlo had been studying law at Pisa University and suddenly, without taking his degree, he had sailed home to propose to Letizia, and had been accepted. On the Continent upper-class marriages were affairs of birth and money, but in unsophisticated Corsica they were usually affairs of the heart. Not that the present wedding was unsatisfactory from the point of view of lineage and property. Far from it.

The Buonapartes lived originally in Tuscany. An army officer named Ugo is mentioned in an act of 1122 as fighting beside Frederick the One-Eyed, Duke of Swabia, to subdue Tuscany, and it was Ugo’s nephew, when he became a member of the Council governing Florence, who took the surname Buonaparte, meaning ‘the good party’. By ‘the good party’ he designated the Emperor’s men, believers in knightly prowess and the unity of Italy, over against the papal party, which included the new business class. But the ‘good party’ lost power and Ugo Buonaparte had to leave Florence. He went to live in the seaport of Sarzana. In the troubled first half of the sixteenth century one of Ugo’s descendants, a certain Francesco Buonaparte, sailed from Sarzana to seek his fortune in Corsica, which had begun to be colonized by Genoa, and here Francesco’s family had made a good name for themselves, chiefly as lawyers active in local government.

The Ramolinos were descended from the Counts of Collalto in Lombardy and had been established in Corsica for 250 years. Like the Buonapartes, they had married mainly into other long-established families of Italian origin, and sons went into the army. Letizia’s father had commanded the Ajaccio garrison, and later became Inspector General of Roads and Bridges, an unexacting post since Corsica was practically devoid of both. He died when Letizia was five, and two years later her mother married Captain Franz Fesch, a Swiss officer serving in the Genoese navy. It was her Swiss stepfather who gave Letizia away.

From the material point of view also the couple were well matched. Carlo, whose father had died four years earlier, brought his wife the family house in the Via Malerba, two of the best vineyards near Ajaccio, and some pasture and arable land, while Letizia’s dowry consisted of thirty-one acres, a mill and a big oven for baking bread, valued altogether at 6,705 livres. With Carlo’s property probably worth about the same, the young couple could expect an annual income of about 670 livres, mainly in kind, equivalent to £700 today.

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So the dashing young lawyer married the army officer’s beautiful daughter and when the last guest had gone took her to live on the first floor of his big house with shutters in a narrow street near the sea. On the ground floor lived Carlo’s mother and his rich, gout-ridden Uncle Lucciano, Archdeacon of Ajaccio; on the top floor lived cousins, who could sometimes be difficult, and now to the household was added Letizia. She was slender and petite – only five feet one. Her eyes were dark brown, her hair chestnut, her teeth white, and she possessed two features of the thoroughbred: a slender, finely bridged nose and long white hands. Despite her beauty, she was extremely shy, sometimes to the point of awkwardness. She was also, even for a Corsican, unusually devout. She went to Mass every day, a practice she was to retain all her life.

Corsica at this time was attracting attention by her efforts to become independent. In 1755 a twenty-nine-year-old ensign in the Corsican Guard serving the King of Naples, Pasquale Paoli by name, returned to the island, put himself at the head of guerrillas and drove the Genoese out of all central Corsica, bottling them up in a few ports, of which Ajaccio was one. He then gave the Corsicans a democratic constitution, with himself as chief executive, and proceeded to rule wisely. He stamped out bandits, built some roads, founded schools and even a small university.

Carlo Buonaparte, like every Corsican, detested Genoese rule, which taxed Corsicans heavily and reserved the best jobs for supercilious Genoese noblemen. He wanted his country to be completely free and, what is more, was prepared to work for that. He was too young to stand for office or even to vote, but he paid visits to Paoli, and two years after his marriage he took Letizia with him on the three-day horseback journey to Corte, Paoli’s fortress capital. Usually Letizia went out only for Mass, and evidently Carlo wanted to show off his striking young wife.

Paoli was a tall, heavy man with reddish-blond hair and piercing blue eyes. He lived in a house guarded by five large dogs, and himself somewhat resembled a friendly mastiff. In his green uniform with gold embroidery, all day he walked up and down, up and down, pulsating with energy, dictating to his secretary or quoting Livy and Plutarch. He drew strength from the classics, as other men from the Bible, and would say, ‘I defy Rome, Sparta or Thebes to show me thirty years of such patriotism as Corsica can boast.’

Paoli was a born bachelor, forty-one years old, and besides lived only for Corsican independence. But he appreciated shy Letizia. So much so that in the evenings he stopped pacing, drew up a chair and played reversi – a card game – with her. Letizia won so often that Paoli told her she had the game in her blood.

Paoli was still very much the guerrilla leader. He told Carlo that he intended to make a diversionary attack on the nearby Genoese island of Capraia, so that Genoese troops in Corsican ports would hurry to Capraia’s defence. This would anger the Pope, who had originally given Corsica and Capraia to Genoa, and Paoli asked Carlo to go to Rome as his ambassador in order to prevent any counter-measures. This was an honour and a great mark of trust in twenty-year-old Carlo.

Leaving Letizia with his mother, Carlo sailed for Rome. It was no easy task he had been set, for the five bishops in Corsica, all appointed from Genoa, continually sent Rome adverse reports on Paoli. However, Carlo was a good talker and his courteous manners made a favourable impression. He explained Paoli’s policy so ably that Rome refrained from reprisals. He did, however, find the Holy City extremely expensive and to get home had to borrow his fare from a Corsican named Saliceti, one of the Pope’s doctors.

Back in Ajaccio, Carlo could feel well satisfied. Paoli was pleased with his work and – perhaps the games of reversi had something to do with it – people were saying that he looked on Carlo as his likely successor. Letizia, after having had the sadness of losing first a boy, then a girl in infancy, was now the proud mother of a healthy son, Giuseppe.

With the suddenness of a Corsican thunderstorm, this happiness was marred. Paoli in a sense had succeeded too well, for the Genoese, realizing the game was up, had decided to sell Corsica. The buyer was the King of France, Louis XV. He had recently lost Minorca and was anxious to redress his power in the Mediterranean. He signed the deed of purchase at Versailles on 15 May 1768, and at once made plans for taking possession.

The Corsicans held urgent meetings. There were 130,000 of them at this time: a fiery people, bright-eyed, shrill-voiced, forceful in gesture. The typical Corsican wore a short jacket, breeches and long gaiters made of coarse chocolate-coloured corduroy; on his head was cocked a pointed black velvet cap, across his shoulders lay a loaded musket, shot being carried in a leather pouch. He lived in a stone windowless house, lighted at night by a flaring branch of pine, in a corner of which stood a heap of chestnuts which he ground to make his bread. Olives and grapes he picked from his own trees and vines, game – mainly partridge and boar – he shot with his own gun. So he did not need to work in the fields, and considered such work demeaning. His wants were few, and since coinage was hardly known, he felt small temptation to amass wealth. On the other hand he possessed, to an unusual degree, a sense of independence. This bred tremendous assurance, and its counterpart, self-importance.

With such men as these to lead, Paoli decided to resist the French. Carlo felt the same. They called mass meetings; at one of them Carlo made an impassioned and very honest speech: ‘If freedom could be had for the wishing, everyone would be free, but an unfaltering attachment to freedom, rising above all difficulties and based on facts not appearances, is rarely found in men, and that is why those who do possess that attachment are considered virtually superhuman’ – as Paoli was by the islanders. A majority at this meeting voted for resistance, and the men dispersed shouting ‘Freedom or Death.’

In August 1768 French warships landed 10,000 troops at Bastia, on the other side of the island from Ajaccio. Carlo hurried into the mountains to join Paoli. Letizia went also, to look after him in case he were wounded. The Corsican guerrillas, Paoli excepted, had no uniform and they had no cannon; they charged not to fife and drum but to the shrill haunting note of Triton shells. They knew nothing of drill but they did know every corner of the maquis, the thick undergrowth of myrtle, arbutus, broom and other sweet-smelling shrubs which cover the Corsican hills. Paoli led them to victory and took 500 prisoners. The French had to retreat and their commander, Chauvelin, resigned in shame.

Next spring the French returned, 22,000 of them this time, led by the able Comte de Vaux. Again Carlo took to the maquis. Letizia went with him. She was pregnant and she carried her baby son in her arms. She camped in a granite cavern on Corsica’s highest peak, Monte Rotondo, while Carlo led his men against the French. Sometimes she slipped out to see: ‘Bullets whistled past my ears, but I trusted in the protection of the Virgin Mary, to whom I had consecrated my unborn child.’

The Corsicans fought stubbornly. In this and the previous year’s fighting they killed or wounded no less than 4,200 French. But they were too heavily outnumbered and on 9 May Paoli was decisively defeated at Ponte Nuovo. Carlo was still keeping up resistance on Monte Rotondo when, two weeks later, a French officer arrived carrying a white flag. He told Carlo that Corte was in French hands, and the war over. Paoli had decided to go into exile in England. If Carlo and his comrades returned to their homes they would be unmolested.

Carlo and Letizia went to Corte. Here the Comte de Vaux, who had come to feel a healthy respect for Corsicans, assured them that the French came not as oppressors but as friends. Carlo was now faced with a cruel choice. Should he and Letizia go into exile with Paoli? After all, he was one of Paoli’s trusted lieutenants. Perhaps the English would help them win their freedom, though appeals to England had brought no support in the present war. Or should they accept the new situation? Unlike Paoli, Carlo was a family man, and he saw how difficult it would be to make a living abroad as a lawyer. Paoli was an idealist, ‘superhuman’ in his devotion to freedom, but Carlo was more practical. He had twice risked his life to keep Corsica free. That was enough. He would remain in Ajaccio. But he parted from Paoli on good terms, going to Bastia to wave him goodbye as he sailed in an English warship with 340 other Corsicans who preferred exile to French rule.

Carlo and Letizia, heavy-hearted, resumed their life in Ajaccio. The new French garrison hauled down the Corsican flag – argent, a Moor’s head proper, bandaged over the eyes – and ran up their own blue flag with white lilies. French was the new official language, and while Carlo started to learn it, Letizia waited for the child who, as the result of Carlo’s decision, would be born not a Corsican in London but a Frenchman in Ajaccio.

July passed into August, a stiflingly hot month in the little seaport sheltered from breezes. August 15 is the feast of the Assumption, and Letizia, with her devotion to the Virgin Mary, insisted on going to the cathedral for High Mass. When Mass had begun she felt the first signs of labour. Helped by her practical sister-in-law, Geltruda Paravicini, she regained her house a minute’s walk away. She did not have time to go upstairs to bed; instead she lay down on the sofa on the ground floor, while Geltruda called the doctor. On the sofa, shortly before noon, with almost no pain, Letizia gave birth to a son. He was born with a caul, that is, part of the membrane covered his head, which in Corsica as in many places is considered lucky.

Later that day a priest from the cathedral came to baptize the boy. Doubtless he expected that Maria would be included among his names, since Letizia had consecrated him to the Virgin Mary and he had been born on her greatest feast; it was quite usual to add Maria to the main name: Carlo, for instance, was Carlo Maria. But the parents were not inclined to any feminine touch. The child whom Letizia had gallantly carried beside her soldiering husband was to have one name only: Napoleone, after one of Letizia’s uncles who had fought the French and just recently died. Originally, Napoleone was the name of an Egyptian martyr who suffered in Alexandria under Diocletian. Letizia pronounced it with a short ‘o’, but on most Corsican lips it sounded like Nabullione.

Excitement and exertion on the mountains may have caused the baby to have been born before term; at any rate he was not robust. Letizia breast-fed him herself and engaged a sturdy peasant wet-nurse as well, a sailor’s wife named Camilla Ilari. So the child had no shortage of milk. He was cosseted by a mother who had already lost two children, and when he cried was rocked to sleep in his wooden cradle. All this care, combined with Ajaccio’s healthy climate and sea air, produced the desired effect and the baby which had been born puny began to grow into a sturdy child.

Whereas Giuseppe, the elder boy, was quiet and composed, Napoleone was full of energy and curiosity, so that visitors turned his name into Rabulione – ‘he who meddles in everything’. He had a generous nature and would share his toys and sweets with other children without asking a return. But he was always ready for a scrap. He liked to take on Giuseppe, who was his elder by nineteen months; they would roll on the ground in the garden, biting, slapping, twisting each other’s necks, and often it was the younger boy who won. Evidently with the rowdy Napoleone in mind, Letizia cleared one room of furniture, and here on wet days the boys could do what they liked, even draw on the walls.

Napoleone grew up in an atmosphere of security and affection. His young parents were devoted to each other, and they both loved children. Later Carlo, as a Corsican, would have the right of life and death over his sons, but now it was for the mother to administer discipline. When Carlo tried to gloss over the boys’ faults, ‘Let them be,’ said Letizia. ‘That is not your business, but mine.’ She was a great person for cleanliness, and made her children take daily baths. Napoleone did not mind this, but what he did mind was going to the long-drawn-out High Mass on Sunday. If he tried to skip it, he got a sound slap from Letizia.

The food he ate came largely from his parents’ land; ‘the Buonapartes,’ said Archdeacon Lucciano with pride, ‘have never paid for bread, wine and oil.’ Bread was home-baked from corn ground in the mill that had been part of Letizia’s dowry. The milk was goat’s milk, the cheese a creamy goat’s cheese called bruccio. There was no butter, but plenty of olive oil; little meat, but plenty of fresh fish, including tunny. Everything was of good quality and nutritious. Napoleone took little interest in any food except black cherries: these he liked extremely.

When he was five, he was sent to a mixed day school run by nuns. In the afternoon the children were taken for a walk, and on these occasions Napoleone liked to hold hands with a girl named Giacominetta. The other boys noticed this, as well as the fact that Napoleone, careless about dress, always had his stockings round his ankles. They would follow him, shouting:

Napoleone di mezza calzettaFa l’amore a Giacominetta.

Corsicans hate being made sport of, and in this respect Napoleone was a typical Corsican. He picked up sticks or stones, rushed among the jeering boys, and yet another scrap began.

From the nuns Napoleone went to a boys’ day school run by a certain Father Recco. Here he learned to read – in Italian, for French innovations did not touch the schools. He learned to write, also in Italian. He learned arithmetic, and this he liked. He even did sums out of school, for pleasure. One day, aged eight, he rode off with a local farmer to inspect a mill. Having learned from the farmer how much corn the mill would grind in an hour, he worked out the quantities ground in one day and one week. He also calculated the volume of water required to turn the mill-stones.

During the long summer holidays the family moved – taking their mattresses with them – to one of their farm houses near the sea or in the hills. Here Napoleone would be taken on long rides with his forceful Aunt Geltruda, who had no children of her own and liked to instruct him in farming. In this way he learned about yields of corn, the planting and pruning of vines, and the damage done by Uncle Lucciano’s goats to olive trees.

Corsican families like the Buonapartes were in a very unusual social position. Both Carlo and Letizia were nobles by birth: that is, for 300 years most of their forbears had married equals, and, although there was no inbreeding, a certain physical and mental refinement could be expected in each generation. But they differed from the rest of the European nobility in that they were not rich and possessed no privileges. They paid taxes like anyone else and workmen called them by their first names. Their house in Ajaccio was larger than most, but not essentially different: it had no family portraits on the walls, no footmen bowing and scraping. While their Continental counterparts, grown soft and fat, sought a never-never world in titillating novels and masked balls, the Corsican nobility had perforce remained close to the soil. They were more direct, more spontaneous: one small example is that members of a family kissed one another on the mouth. Because they lacked the trappings, they paid more attention to the inner characteristics of nobility. The Buonapartes believed – and taught Napoleone to believe – that honour is more important than money, fidelity than self-indulgence, courage than anything else in the world. Drawing on her experience, Letizia told Napoleone, ‘When you grow up, you’ll be poor. But it’s better to have a fine room for receiving friends, a fine suit of clothes and a fine horse, so that you put up a brave show – even if you have to live off dry bread.’ Sometimes she sent Giuseppe and Napoleone to bed supperless, not as a punishment but to train them ‘to bear discomfort without showing it’.

In France or Italy or England Napoleone would have grown up with a few friends of his own rank, but in Corsica all mixed on an equal footing. He was on the closest terms with Camilla, his wet-nurse, and his two best friends were Camilla’s sons. In the streets of Ajaccio and in the country he played with Corsicans of all types. He was taught not by a foreign tutor but by Corsicans. Though only two of his eight great-grandparents were of mainly Corsican stock, Napoleone inherited or acquired a number of Corsican attitudes and values.

The most important of these was a sense of justice. This for centuries had been a prime Corsican trait, for it is mentioned by classical writers. One example of it occurred when Napoleone was at school. The boys were divided into two groups, Romans and Carthaginians; the school walls were hung with swords, shields and standards made of wood or pasteboard, and the group superior in work carried off a trophy from the other. Napoleone was placed among the Carthaginians. He did not know much history, but at least he knew that the Romans had beaten the Carthaginians. He wanted to be on the winning side. It happened that Giuseppe was a Roman and Napoleone finally persuaded his easy-going brother to change places with him. Now he was a Roman, and should have felt content. But on reflection he decided he had been unjust to Giuseppe. He began to be weighed down by remorse. Finally he unburdened himself to his mother, and only when she had reassured him did he feel easy again.

Another example relates to his father. Carlo from time to time liked to go to one of the Ajaccio cafés to have a drink with friends. Sometimes he played cards for money, and if he lost Letizia was left short for housekeeping. She would say to Napoleone, ‘Go and see if your father’s gambling,’ and off he would have to go. He hated the idea of spying, and what is more, spying on his own father: it revolted his sense of justice. He adored his mother but all his life this was one small thing he was to hold against her.

Under Genoese rule justice had been venal, so the Corsicans had taken the law into their own hands and evolved a kind of barbarian justice: revenge. The Corsican instructed his children to believe in God and the Church, but he omitted the precept about forgiving injuries; indeed, he told them that insults must be avenged. Since the Corsican was extremely sensitive to any reflection on his own dignity, vendettas quickly built up, and were the curse of the island. One observer noted that ‘a Corsican is deemed infamous who does not avenge the death of his tenth cousin.’ ‘Those who conceive their honour injured allow their beards to grow … until they have avenged the affront. These long beards they call barbe di vendetta.’ Revenge was the dark side of the Corsican’s manly pride and sense of justice; Carlo possessed it, and so did his son.

In this world of sudden killings on the mountainside people lived in terror of the evil eye, vampires, spells. Letizia, on hearing startling news, would cross herself very quickly and murmur ‘Gesù!’, a habit her son picked up. Then again, the Corsicans had a somewhat unhealthy obsession with violent death. Much of their sung poetry took the form of a sister’s dirges for her dear brother suddenly knifed or shot. There were many ghost stories, which Napoleone heard and remembered; there were haunting tales about death and its presages; when anyone was fated to die, a pale light over the house-top announced it; the owl screeched all night, the dog howled, and often a little drum was heard, beaten by a ghost.

Carlo meanwhile was adapting himself well to French rule. He crossed to Pisa to take his degree in law, and in 1771, when the French divided Corsica into eleven legal districts, Carlo got the job of assessor of the Ajaccio district. He had to help the judge both in civil and criminal cases, and to take his place when necessary. His salary was 900 livres a year. He promptly engaged a nurse for the boys, Caterina by name, and two servants to help Letizia with the cooking and laundry.

Carlo also earned money as a practising lawyer and even fought cases on his own behalf. He had never received all Letizia’s promised dowry and when Napoleone was five Carlo brought an action, which he won. He obtained the public sale in Ajaccio market-place of ‘two small barrels, two crates, two wooden jars for carrying grapes, a washing bowl and a tub, a large cask, four medium casks, six poor quality barrels, etc.’ A month later Carlo saw that he was still owed the price of an ox: seventy livres. After a new hearing, a new judgment was issued obliging the Ramolino estate to pay ‘the price of the value of an ox demanded by Carlo Buonaparte’.

Another time, Carlo, on the Corsican principle that if he did not stand up for his rights on small matters, he would soon lose them on large ones, brought a lawsuit against his cousins on the top floor ‘for emptying their slops out the window’, and spoiling one of Letizia’s dresses.