Famous leaders among men

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

He never forgot a kindness. A humble shoemaker, who worked for him in these days of poverty, and waited for his pay, was always employed by Napoleon after he became Emperor, though he was urged to go to some one more fashionable. A jeweller, who once trusted him, was remembered in Napoleon's days of prosperity, and thus made his fortune. To a lady, a stranger to him, who once was kind to him in sickness in these early years, he sent two thousand dollars, hearing that her circumstances had changed. To an old man in Jersey, who had once loaned his father twenty-five louis, he sent ten times that sum.

Reverses began to attend the army of Italy. Whenever it was convenient to use his services, it seemed always to be remembered that he had knowledge and sagacity. Napoleon was asked by the director of military affairs to draw up a plan of operations for the army. It was sent to Kellermann, commander-in-chief of the army of Italy, who rejected it, saving, "The author is a fit inmate for a lunatic asylum." Lanfrey and other historians consider the plan altogether brilliant and admirable.

Napoleon, by years of study, had made himself a master in the science of war, as well as along other lines. He had made himself ready for a great opportunity, and a great opportunity came to him.

France, in her struggle for self-government, had adopted a new constitution, under a Directory of five persons, with a Council of two hundred and fifty Ancients, and a Council of Five Hundred, somewhat like our House of Representatives. The new government, though acceptable to the provinces, did not please either the Royalists or Jacobins of Paris, and the people, now so used to bloodshed, resorted to force to destroy the Directory.

Barras, one of the Directors, who knew Napoleon, immediately thought of him as a young man who could quell a mob. "It is that little Corsican officer," he said, "who will not stand upon ceremony!" The Directory had but about eight thousand soldiers; the National Guard numbered forty thousand. Napoleon spent the whole night in turning the Louvre and the Tuileries into a sort of camp, with artillery posted at all the outlets. He armed all the members of the government, that they might defend themselves if the necessity arose, and he took care to leave a way of retreat open to St. Cloud.

The National Guards appeared on the morning of Oct. 5, 1795 (13th Vendémiaire, as the month was called by the Revolutionary Calendar), in front of Napoleon's troops. All day the two armies were within fifteen paces of each other. At four o'clock in the afternoon, General Danican of the National Guards gave the signal for attack. Napoleon mounted his horse, and the fight began at several places.

The cannon swept them down at every point. At six o'clock the battle was over, and order was restored in Paris. About eighty only were killed, and three or four hundred wounded, as the guns were loaded with powder after two discharges. Napoleon was, as he deserved to be, the hero of the hour. With the utmost self-possession, with a clear brain and never-failing courage, he had been equal to the emergency.

Napoleon was made General of the Interior, with the command of Paris. The days of poverty were over. He found places for several of his family, and was much sought after by those in high position. He was especially good to the poor, and the Duchess d'Abrantès tells how he climbed to attics and went down into cellars to feed the hungry. As he was stepping out of his carriage one day at the home of the Duchess, a woman held her dead child before him. It had died from want. She had come to ask him to save her other children. "If nobody will give me anything," she said, "I must even take them all five and drown myself with them." Napoleon remembered how near he had been to drowning himself only a little time before. He obtained the wages due to her husband, who had been killed while at work on the roof of the Tuileries, and a pension was granted her.

Soon after this an attractive boy about fourteen years of age came to Napoleon and asked for the sword of his father, who was a general of the Republic, and had been put to death by the Jacobins, because he was a Girondist, or moderate Republican.