After the war was ended she lived with her husband until he died, and later she married again. But in her whole life the battle of Monmouth stood out as the great day on which she realized her ambition and helped the American forces in battle.
CHAPTER XXI
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
There are only two names in history that are as great as conquerors and statesmen as that of Julius Cæsar of whom you have read in the present book. One of these two men was Alexander the Great, who lived hundreds of years before the birth of Christ; the other was Napoleon Buonaparte, later called Bonaparte and then Napoleon, who lived and died a hundred years ago.
Greater than Cæsar, greater than Alexander is the name of Napoleon. While Cæsar was of noble birth and had all the advantages of position and authority in his favor, and while Alexander was a king and born to rule, Napoleon Buonaparte sprang from the humblest beginnings and had nothing to help him make his way except his own genius. While Alexander was little but a wonderful soldier, Napoleon Buonaparte was both a mighty soldier and a great statesman, and not only did he place himself upon a throne, but he made all the members of his family kings and princes.
He was born on the island of Corsica in 1769, and was the fourth child and the youngest son of Charles Buonaparte who lived in the town of Ajaccio and was as poor as his neighbors, which, as he lived in Corsica, means that he was very poor indeed. Charles Buonaparte was an ardent Corsican patriot and often plotted how Corsica could win her freedom from France, but nevertheless he held a French office and was willing to send his sons to French schools.
It was not long before Napoleon showed his family that he had the stubborn nature and iron will that would make him a great soldier. Before he was ten years old he dominated his brothers and sisters and made them do as he said. He was afraid of nothing, and showed himself a natural leader among the children with whom he lived. As soon as he was old enough to talk he desired to be a soldier, and when he was ten years old he was taken by his father to a military school in France.
For five years Napoleon remained at this school at Brienne mastering the military art. As he was gloomy and silent and did not make friends easily, he was the butt of ridicule and bore ill natured jokes from the other young students there, but in spite of this, all were a little afraid of him and did not dare to provoke him too far.
When Napoleon was sixteen years old, his military education was considered to be finished and he was given the commission of a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment. In all these years he had only seen his father once. But Charles Buonaparte either had realized the greatness of his own son, or had one of those flashes of prophesy that sometimes come to dying men, for on his deathbed he cried out, asking for the son, Napoleon, whose sword, he said, was to shake the earth and who was to make himself the master of all Europe.