LITMIR.BIZ

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of five acres approached by an avenue of lime trees. Brienne had been an ordinary boarding-school until two years before, when the Government, alarmed by France’s string of defeats, had turned it into one of twelve new military academies. But they had retained the old staff, so, paradoxically, Brienne Military Academy was run by members of the Order of St Francis, in brown habits and sandals. The head-master was Father Louis Berton, a gruff, rather pompous friar in his early thirties, and the second master was his brother, Father Jean Baptiste Berton, an ex-grenadier known as ‘the friar in ique’ because he used so many words ending in -ique. They were unremarkable men but they ran Brienne well and it was reckoned one of the better academies.

      Napoleon was taken to a dormitory containing ten cubicles, each furnished with a bed, a bran mattress, blankets, a wooden chair and a cupboard on which stood a jug and wash-basin. Here he unpacked his three pairs of sheets, twelve towels, two pairs of black stockings, a dozen shirts, a dozen white collars, a dozen handkerchiefs, two nightshirts, six cotton nightcaps, and finally his smart blue cadet’s uniform. A container for holding powder to dress his hair and a hair-ribbon he laid aside, for until the age of twelve cadets had to keep their hair cut short. At ten o’clock a bell rang, candles were blown out and Napoleon’s cubicle, like the others, was locked. If he needed anything he might call to one of two servants who slept in the dormitory.

      At six Napoleon was awakened and his cubicle unlocked. Having washed and put on his blue uniform with white buttons, he joined the other boys in his class – the ‘septième’ – for a talk on good behaviour and the laws of France. Then he went to Mass. After breakfast of crusty white bread, fruit and a glass of water, at eight he began lessons, the staple subjects being Latin, history and geography, mathematics and physics. At ten came classes in building fortifications and in drawing, including the drawing and tinting of relief maps. At noon the boys had their main meal of the day. It consisted of soup, boiled meat, an entrée, a dessert, and red burgundy mixed with one-third water.

      After dinner Napoleon had one hour’s recreation, then more lessons in the staple subjects. Between four and six he learned, depending on the day, fencing, dancing, gymnastics, music and German, English being an alternative. He then did two hours’ homework and at eight supped off a roast, an entrée and salad. After supper he had his second hour’s recreation. Evening prayers were followed by lights out at ten. On Thursdays and Sundays he went to High Mass and Vespers. He was expected to go to Confession once a month, and to Communion once every two months. He had six weeks’ annual holiday between 15 September and 1 November: only rich pupils could afford to go home and Napoleon was not one of them. In winter the cubicles became very cold and sometimes water in the jugs froze. The first time this happened Napoleon’s puzzled exclamations caused much amusement: he had never before seen ice.

      There were fifty boys at Brienne when Napoleon arrived but as he went up in the school numbers increased to a hundred. Most were his social superiors. Some boys had names famous in history, others had fathers or uncles who hunted with the King, mothers who attended Court balls. In Corsica he had been near the top socially; now he suddenly found himself near the bottom. Also, he was a state-subsidized boy, and although Louis XVI had stipulated that no distinction must be made, inevitably the fee-paying boys made the others feel it. Finally, he was the only Corsican. There were other boys from overseas, including at least two English boys, but Napoleon, with his Italian accent, inevitably stood out, and for a new boy that does not pay. Alone in a strange country, far from his family, speaking a new language, still feeling awkward in his blue uniform, he certainly needed the courage his mother had wished him. But at nine, boys are adaptable and soon he had settled in.

      We have three authentic incidents from the Brienne years. The first is an early one, when Napoleon was nine or ten. He had broken some rule and the master on duty imposed the usual punishment: he was to wear dunce’s clothes and to eat his dinner kneeling down by the refectory door. With everyone watching, Napoleon came in, dressed no longer in his blue uniform but in coarse brown homespun. He was pale, tense and staring straight ahead. ‘Down on your knees, sir!’ At the seminarist’s command Napoleon was seized by sudden vomiting and a violent attack of nerves. Stamping his foot, he shouted, ‘I’ll eat my dinner standing up, not on my knees. In my family we kneel only to God.’ The seminarist tried to force him, but Napoleon rolled over on the floor sobbing and shouting, ‘Isn’t that true, Maman? Only to God! Only to God!’ Finally the Head-master intervened and cancelled the punishment.

      On another occasion the school was having a holiday. Some of the boys were performing a verse tragedy – Voltaire’s La Mort de César – and Napoleon, older now, was cadet-officer of the day, when another cadet came to warn him that the wife of the school porter, Madame Hauté, was trying to push her way in without an invitation. When stopped, she started shouting abuse. ‘Take the woman away,’ said Napoleon curtly, ‘she is bringing licentiousness into the camp.’

      All the cadets were allotted a small piece of land on which they could grow vegetables and make a garden. Napoleon, with his farming background, took a lot of trouble planting his piece of land and keeping it neat. Since his immediate neighbours were not interested in gardening he added their ground to his; he put up a trellis, planted bushes, and to keep the garden from being spoiled, enclosed it with a wooden palisade. Here he liked to read and think about home. One of the books he read there was Tasso’s epic of the Crusaders, Jerusalem Delivered, cantos from which the Corsican guerrillas used to sing, and another was Delille’s Jardins, one passage of which imprinted itself on his memory. ‘Potaveri,’ he recalled, ‘is taken from his native land, Tahiti; brought to Europe, he is given every attention and nothing is neglected in order to try to amuse him. But only one thing strikes him, and brings to his eyes tears of sorrow: a mulberry tree; he throws his arms round it and kisses it with a cry of joy: “Tree from my homeland, tree from my homeland!”’

      The garden which reminded him of home became Napoleon’s retreat on holidays. If anyone poked a nose in then, Napoleon would chase him out. On 25 August, the feast of St Louis, which was celebrated as the King’s official birthday, every cadet over fourteen was allowed to buy gunpowder and make fireworks. In the garden next to Napoleon’s a group of cadets built a set-piece in the form of a pyramid, but when the time came to light it, a spark shot into a box of gunpowder, there was a terrific explosion, Napoleon’s palisade was smashed and the boys in their alarm stampeded into his garden. Furious at seeing his trellis broken and his bushes trampled down, Napoleon seized a hoe, rushed at the intruders and drove them out.

      These three episodes were doubtless remembered because they show a small serious-minded boy standing up for his rights, or asserting himself, to an unusual degree. But they were exceptional occasions, and it must not be thought that Napoleon was stern or rebellious or a poor mixer. The contrary is true. When the Chevalier de Kéralio, inspector of military schools, visited Brienne in 1783 he had this to say of fourteen-year-old Napoleon: ‘obedient, affable, straightforward, grateful’.

      Napoleon made two school-friends. One was a scholarship boy a year his senior: Charles Le Lieur de Ville-sur-Arce, who like Napoleon was good at mathematics, and stood up for the Corsican when he was teased. The other was Pierre François Laugier de Bellecour, son of Baron de Laugier. He was a fee-paying boy with a pretty face. Born, aptly enough, in Nancy, he began to show signs of becoming a nancy-boy or, to use Brienne slang, a ‘nymph’. Pierre François was in the class below Napoleon, who, noting these signs, one day took him aside. ‘You’re mixing with a crowd I don’t approve of. Your new friends are corrupting you. So make a choice between them and me.’ ‘I haven’t changed,’ replied Pierre François, ‘and I consider you my best friend.’ Napoleon was satisfied and the two continued on good terms.

      Napoleon made two grown-up friends. One was the porter, the husband of the thrusting Madame Hauté, the other the curé of Brienne, Père Charles. He prepared Napoleon for his first Communion at the age of eleven, and the cure’s simple, holy life made a lasting impression on him.

      More important than these friendships were the values Napoleon imbibed. They were emphatically not the values of Paris. The scoffers and sneerers of Paris drawing-rooms, Beaumarchais, Holbach and the rest, if they were known at all, counted for little at Brienne. Tucked away in the depths of the country, it belonged to an older, less superficial

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