Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica by John Kendrick Bangs (good non fiction books to read TXT) 📖

Duchess of Dantzig. The anecdote suffices to show how wretchedly poor and yet how full of interest and useful to those about him Napoleon was at the time.

In February, 1793, a change for the better in his fortunes occurred. Bonaparte, in cooperation with Admiral Turget, was ordered to make a descent upon Sardinia. What immediately followed can best be told in Bonaparte's own words. "My descent was all right," he said afterwards, "and I had the Sardines all ready to put in boxes, when Turget had a fit of sea-sickness, lost his bearings, and left me in the lurch. There was nothing left for me but to go back to Corsica and take it out of Joseph, which I did, much to Joseph's unhappiness. It was well for the family that I did so, for hardly had I arrived at Ajaccio when I found my old friend Paoli wrapping Corsica up in a brown-paper bundle to send to the King of England with his compliments. This I resisted, with the result that our whole family was banished, and those fools of Corsicans broke into our house and smashed all of our furniture. They little knew that that furniture, if in existence to-day, would bring millions of francs as curios if sold at auction. It was thus that the family came to move to France and that I became in fact what I had been by birth--a Frenchman. If I had remained a Corsican, Paoli's treachery would have made me an Englishman, to which I should never have become reconciled, although had I been an Englishman I should have taken more real pleasure out of the battle of Waterloo than I got.

"After this I was ordered to Toulon. The French forces here were commanded by General Cartaux, who had learned the science of war painting portraits in Paris. He ought to have been called General Cartoon. He besieged Toulon in a most impressionistic fashion. He'd bombard and bombard and bombard, and then leave the public to guess at the result. It's all well enough to be an impressionist in painting, but when it comes to war the public want more decided effects. When I got there, as a brigadier-general, I saw that Cartaux was wasting his time and ammunition. His idea seemed to be that by firing cannon all day he could so deafen the enemy that at night the French army could sneak into Toulon unheard and capture the city, which was, to say the least, unscientific. I saw at once that Cartaux must go, and I soon managed to make life so unbearable for him that he resigned, and a man named Doppet, a physician, was placed in command. Doppet was worse than Cartaux. Whenever anybody got hurt he'd stop the war and prescribe for the injured man. If he could have prescribed for the enemy they'd have died in greater numbers I have no doubt, but, like the idiot he was, he practised on his own forces. Besides, he was more interested in surgery than in capturing Toulon. He always gave the ambulance corps the right of line, and I believe to this day that his plan of routing the English involved a sudden rush upon them, taking them by surprise, and the subsequent amputation of their legs. The worst feature of the situation, as I found it, was that these two men, falling back upon their rights as my superior officers, refused to take orders from me. I called their attention to the fact that rank had been abolished, and that in France one man was now as good as another; but they were stubborn, so I wrote to Paris and had them removed. Then came Dugommier, who backed me up in my plans, and Toulon as a consequence immediately fell with a dull, sickening thud."

It was during this siege that Bonaparte first encountered Junot. Having occasion to write a note while under fire from the enemy's batteries, Napoleon called for a stenographer. Junot came to him.

"Do you know shorthand?" asked the general, as a bomb exploded at his feet.

"Slightly," said Junot, calmly.

"Take this message," returned the general, coolly, dictating.

Junot took down Bonaparte's words, but just as he finished another bomb exploded near by, scattering dust and earth and sand all over the paper.

"Confounded boors, interrupting a gentleman at his correspondence!" said Bonaparte, with an angry glance at the hostile gunners. "I'll have to dictate that message all over again."

"Yes, general," returned Junot, quickly, "but you needn't mind that. There will be no extra charge. It's really my fault. I should have brought an umbrella."

"You are a noble fellow," said Napoleon, grasping his hand and squeezing it warmly. "In the heyday of my prosperity, if my prosperity ever goes a-haying, I shall remember you. Your name?"

"Junot, General," was the reply.

Bonaparte frowned. "Ha! ha!" he laughed, acridly. "You jest, eh? Well, Junot, when I am Jupiter I'll reward you."

Later on, discovering his error, Bonaparte made a memorandum concerning Junot, which was the first link in the chain which ultimately bound the stenographer to fame as a marshal of France.

There have been various other versions of this anecdote, but this is the only correct one, and is now published for the first time on the authority of M. le Comte de B--, whose grandfather was the bass drummer upon whose drum Junot was writing the now famous letter, and who was afterwards ennobled by Napoleon for his services in Egypt, where, one dark, drizzly night, he frightened away from Bonaparte's tent a fierce band of hungry lions by pounding vigorously upon his instrument.

About this time Napoleon, who had been spelling his name in various ways, and particularly with a "u," as Buonaparte, decided to settle finally upon one form of designation.

"People are beginning to bother the life out of me with requests for my autograph," he said to Bourrienne, "and it is just as well that I should settle on one. If I don't, they'll want me to write out a complete set of them, and I haven't time to do that."

"Buonaparte is a good-looking name," suggested Bourrienne. "It is better than Bona Parte, as you sometimes call yourself. If you settle on Bona Parte, you'd have really three names; and as you don't write society verse for the comic papers, what's the use? Newspaper reporters will refer to you as Napoleon B. Parte or N. Bona Parte, and the public hates a man who parts his name in the middle. Parte is a good name in its way, but it's too short and abrupt. Few men with short, sharp, decisive names like that ever make their mark. Let it be Buonaparte, which is sort of high-sounding--it makes a mouthful, as it were."

"If I drop the 'u' the autograph will be shorter, and I'll gain time writing it," said Napoleon. "It shall be Bonaparte without 'u.'"

"Humph!" ejaculated Bourrienne. "Bonaparte without me! I like that. Might as well talk of Dr. Johnson without Boswell."

Bonaparte now went to Nice as chief of batallion in the army of Italy; but having incurred the displeasure of a suspicious home government, he was shortly superseded, and lived in retirement with his family at Marseilles for a brief time. Here he fell in love again, and would have married Mademoiselle Clery, whom he afterwards made Queen of Sweden, had he not been so wretchedly poor.

"This, my dear," he said, sadly, to Mademoiselle Clery, "is the beastly part of being the original ancestor of a family instead of a descendant. I've got to make the fortune which will enrich posterity, while I'd infinitely prefer having a rich uncle somewhere who'd have the kindness to die and leave me a million. There's Joseph--lucky man. He's gone and got married. He can afford it. He has me to fall back on, but I--I haven't anybody to fall back on, and so, for the second time in my life, must give up the only girl I ever loved."

With these words Napoleon left Mademoiselle Clery, and returned to Paris in search of employment.

"If there's nothing else to do, I can disguise myself as a Chinaman and get employment in Madame Sans Gene's laundry," he said. "There's no disgrace in washing, and in that way I may be able to provide myself with decent linen, anyhow. Then I shall belong to the laundered aristocracy, as the English have it."

But greater things than this awaited Napoleon at Paris. Falling in with Barras, a member of the Convention which ruled France at this time, he learned that the feeling for the restoration of the monarchy was daily growing stronger, and that the royalists of Paris were a great menace to the Convention.

"They'll mob us the first thing we know," said Barras. "The members look to me to save them in case of attack, but I must confess I'd like to sublet the contract."

"Give it to me, then. I'm temporarily out of a job," said Napoleon, "and the life I'm leading is killing me. If it weren't for Talma's kindness in letting me lead his armies on the stage at the Odeon, with a turn at scene-shifting when they are not playing war dramas, I don't know what I'd do for my meals; and even when I do get a sandwich ahead occasionally I have to send it to Marseilles to my mother. Give me your contract, and if I don't save your Convention you needn't pay me a red franc. I hate aristocrats, and I hate mobs; and this being an aristocratic mob, I'll go into the work with enthusiasm."

"You!" cried Barras. "A man of your size, or lack of it, save the Convention from a mob of fifty thousand? Nonsense!"

"Did you ever hear that little slang phrase so much in vogue in America," queried Napoleon, coldly fixing his eye on Barras--"a phrase which in French runs, 'Petit, mais O Moi'--or, as they have it, 'Little, but O My'? Well, that is me. {1} Besides, if I am small, there is less chance of my being killed, which will make me more courageous in the face of fire than one of your bigger men would be."

"I will put my mind on it," said Barras, somewhat won over by Napoleon's self-confidence.

"Thanks," said Napoleon; "and now come into the cafe and have dinner with me."

"Save your money, Bonaparte," said Barras. "You can't afford to pay for your own dinner, much less mine."

"That's precisely why I want you to dine with me," returned Napoleon. "If I go alone, they won't serve me because they know I can't pay. If I go in with you, they'll give me everything they've got on the supposition that you will pay the bill. Come! En avant!"

"Vous etes un bouchonnier, vraiment!" said Barras, with a laugh.

"A what?" asked Napoleon, not familiar with the idiom.

"A corker!" explained Barras.

"Very good," said Napoleon, his face lighting up. "If you'll order a bottle of Burgundy with the bird I will show you that I am likewise something of an uncorker."

This readiness on Napoleon's part in the face of difficulty completely captured Barras, and as a result the young adventurer had his first real chance to make an impression on