Military Career
OF
Napoleon the Great
An Account of the Remarkable
Campaigns of the "Man
of Destiny"
[I]
BOYHOOD DAYS AND EARLY CAREER
When Napoleon was a pupil of the Military School at Brienne, as a pensioner of the king, he wrote to his mother in Corsica:
"With Homer in my pocket, and my sword by my side, I hope to carve my way through the world!"
Bonaparte was then a youth of but ten years of age. For nearly thirty-five years from this time his life was a series of achievements, the success of which has rarely been equalled,—from a military standpoint, never.
His infancy was only different from that of most other boys in that he showed great animation of temper, and an impatience of inactivity, by which children of quick perception and lively sensibility are usually distinguished.
It has been said that the name "Napoleon" was given to the new-born infant of Madame Bonaparte, according to a common custom among Catholics, of naming the child after the saint on whose festival it is baptized, and that the 16th of August, the day of young Bonaparte's baptism, was the festival of St. Napoleon, (Napoleone), a saint then peculiar to Corsica.