CHAPTER III.
COUNT MARBŒUF, HIS PUTATIVE FATHER—POVERTY OF THE BONAPARTE FAMILY—EARLY PERSONAL DESCRIPTION OF NAPOLEON—HIS OWN ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF—SATIRISTS’ NARRATION OF HIS SCHOOL-DAYS.
In after life, when Napoleon was successful, and had made a position, reports were spread that his real father was Count Marbœuf, who had been in Corsica, and in after life, or at all events at his entrance into it, acted as his benefactor and patron. Lætitia Ramolini, afterwards Madame Lætitia Bonaparte, was very graceful and pretty, indeed Madame Junot says of her,16 ‘Lætitia was indeed a lovely woman. Those who knew her in advanced life thought her countenance somewhat harsh; but that expression instead of being caused by any austerity of disposition, seemed, on the contrary, to have been produced by timidity.’ Indeed, no one can look at any portrait of Madame Mère, and not be struck with her lofty beauty.
This scandal about Count Marbœuf, it must be remembered, is of French origin, and was well known, and recognised, probably, at its value. To give one illustration,17 ‘La malignité a fait honneur de sa naissance au Comte de Marbœuf, governeur de l’isle, qui rendait des soins assidus à Madame Buonaparte, jeune femme, belle et interressante alors.’
All our English squibs repeat the tale, and the subjoined is certainly the cleverest of them.18
About his parentage indeed,
Biographers have disagreed;
Some say his father was a farmer,
His mother, too, a Cyprian charmer: That his dad Carlo was quite poor, Letitia a French General’s——; If, faithless to her marriage vows, She made a cuckold of her spouse, Then Nap (some characters are rotten) Has been a merrily begotten. But other writers, with civility, Insist he’s sprung from old Nobility, And therefore to his father’s name Attach the highest rank and fame: Nay, furthermore, they add as true, Nap was Paoli’s godson too. But what to this said great Paoli? ‘I stood for one, but ’pon my soul, I At present do not rightly know Whether it was for Nap or Joe.’ It was for Joe, if he’d have said it, But Joe has done him little credit. Now let the honest muse despise All adulation, barefaced lies, And own the truth—Then Boney’s father Was member of the law, or rather, A pettifogger, which his friends, To serve their own politic ends, Would keep a secret, knowing well That pettifoggers go to Hell. When France occasioned some alarms, And Corsica was up in arms, This Carlo Bonaparte thought fit, His parchments for the sword to quit. He fought, they say, with some applause, Tho’ unsuccessful in the cause: Meanwhile, with battle’s din and fright, His wife was in a dismal plight; From town to town Letitia fled, To shun the French, as it is said; Tho’ others whisper that the fair Was under a French Gen’ral’s care, And that to keep secure her charms She fondly trusted to his arms. Be this however as it might, After incessant fear and flight, Letitia (’fore her time, mayhap) Was brought to bed of Master Nap: The Cause, we think, of his ambition, And of his restless disposition.
The Bonaparte family was not rich, their sole means of living being from the father’s professional exertions, and the family was very large, and many mouths to feed; in fact, they were in somewhat straitened circumstances, but not in such squalid poverty as Gillray depicts them, in the accompanying illustration, where our hero may be seen, with his brothers and sisters, gnawing the bony part of a shin of beef.
Madame Junot19 says, ‘Saveria told me that Napoleon was never a pretty boy, as Joseph had been; his head always appeared too large for his body, a defect common to the Bonaparte family. When Napoleon grew up, the peculiar charm of his countenance lay in his eye, especially in the mild expression it assumed in his moments of kindness. His anger, to be sure, was frightful, and though I am no coward, I never could look at him in his fits of rage without shuddering. Though his smile was captivating, yet the expression of his mouth when disdainful, or angry, could scarcely be seen without terror. But that forehead which seemed formed to bear the crowns of a whole world; those hands, of which the most coquettish woman might have been vain, and whose white skin covered muscles of iron; in short, of all that personal beauty which distinguished Napoleon as a young man, no traces were discernible in the boy.’
DEMOCRATIC INNOCENCE.
The young Bonaparte and his wretched Relatives in their native Poverty, while Free Booters in the island of Corsica.
Napoleon said of himself: ‘I was an obstinate and inquisitive child. I was extremely headstrong; nothing overawed me, nothing disconcerted me. I made myself formidable to the whole family. My brother Joseph was the one with whom I was oftenest embroiled; he was bitten, beaten, abused: I went to complain before he had time to recover his confusion.’
At ten years of age, through the medium of his patron, Count Marbœuf, he was sent to the military school at Brienne, which he entered on April 23, 1779. Here he was shy and reserved, and not at all liked by his schoolfellows, who twitted him with his poverty, the country whence he came, his name, and made reflections on his mother; the last particularly exasperating him. His veracious Hudibrastic historian says:—
When he two years at school had been,
He proved more violent and mean:
Unlike his sprightly fellow boys,
Amused with playthings and with toys;
At shuttlecock he’d never stop,
Nor deign to whip the bounding top.
His garden was his sole delight,
Which ne’er improv’d his mental sight;
But thus in childhood serv’d to show
He was to all mankind a foe.
His schoolfellows, in keen sedateness,
He robb’d to prove his urchin greatness:
Deluded by his wheedling art,
Some cheerfully resign’d a part
Of their possessions, and to these }
He added what he chose to seize; }
Then, planting it with num’rous trees }
And putting palisades all round,
He strutted monarch of the ground;
* * * * *
* * * * *
’Twas on a welcome festive morn,
For some great saint divinely born.
No matter why, it was a jolly day,
Boys must be merry on a holiday;
And now behold their bulging pockets,
Enrich’d with pistols, squibs, and rockets—
When some, but humbly begg’d his pardon
Threw fireworks into Boney’s garden;
