A History of France from the Earliest Times to the Treaty of Versailles by Davis William Stearns

Author:Davis, William Stearns [Davis, William Stearns]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Lecturable
Published: 2012-10-15T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVI. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, AS MASTER OF EUROPE

THIS volume is a history of France. It is not a biography of Napoleon. It is not a history of the wars and diplomacy of Europe between 1796 and 1815. To write the first without the other two things is, however, a matter of extreme difficulty. The wisest policy is to state a few threadbare facts about the life and personality of the Corsican, then to give a very thin outline of his more important wars and international policies. In more detail we can next explain what he did for France, and show that his restless genius by no means confined itself solely to military achievements. Finally we can trace over the story of his last years of power and of downfall, when, as a result of his personal catastrophe, France was obliged to remould her constitution and to take back for a while the outcast Bourbons.

It is useless to try to write anything new about Napoleon Bonaparte. It is unavoidable also not to restate facts contained in the most meager work of reference.

The future confounder of Europe was born at Ajaccio, Corsica, in 1769, the son of a "typically poor but noble family." His father, Charles, was of Italian extraction and was by profession an assessor for the local royal court. The young Napoleon must therefore be thought of as an Italian in birth and early breeding. His genius, virtues, vices are nearly all of them Southern. If he became a Frenchman, it is only one by adoption, however completely for a time he dominated the sympathies and enthusiasms of the entire Gallic race. In 1779 he was sent to the Continent to the military school at Brienne. In 1784 he went to the military academy at Paris. In 1785 he was commissioned sub-lieutenant in the artillery. A shy, ill-dressed lad, who did not speak French over-well, he was not particularly popular with his comrades or his teachers; although one of the latter at Paris made a note that "He will go far if circumstances favor him." He was only the forty-second in his class when he received his commission. During the Revolution he presently became possessed with an honest or affected enthusiasm for Jacobin theories and was made a captain in 1793. He achieved his first reputation at the siege of Toulon by his skill in planting a battery which drove the British fleet from the harbor. He was made brigadier-general when he was only twenty-four, but was practically dismissed from the army after he refused to command an infantry brigade against the insurgents in the Vendée.

Then by a turn of Fortune's wheel, in 1795, Barras suddenly summoned him to defend the Convention against the Royalists. His well-aimed cannon-shots alike crushed the chances of a reaction and put his superiors under a heavy obligation to him. He was given command of the "Army of Italy," the most important force at the disposal of the Directory, always excepting the great armies on the Rhine.

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