Each boy gathered up as many as he could carry.
“About face!—FIRE!”
Before the astonished shepherds could stop they were met by a shower of rocks. The big fellows broke and scattered in all directions, and two of them were taken prisoner. Captain Bonaparte would not let them go till the other country boys pledged themselves not to touch his “men” again.
Thus eight-year-old Napoleon became the leader of the boys in his home town.
Before he was ten, he was sent to a military school in France, where sons of noblemen were educated. Some of those French boys were wayward, mean, and savagely cruel. They made fun of the shy country lad, for his rough Corsican ways and speech, and because he was small and sallow. Napoleon had entered the school on a scholarship, so they sneered at him as “the charity boy.” He could not speak French at first, and pronounced his own name so that it sounded like the French words for “Nose of straw.” As Napoleon’s nose was long, straight, and thin, they laughed and shouted his nickname, “Mr. Straw Nose!”
All this made the proud, sensitive lad speechless with rage. He kept himself away from the rest. A garden plot was assigned for each cadet to tend. A few of the others were too idle to take care of theirs, so they gave them to Napoleon and he kept them in order as his own. In the center of his little kingdom he built an arbor where he could stay alone to study and plan as he had done in his little cave in Corsica, and woe to those who entered there without his permission. He had suffered this sort of life nearly four years before his father and mother managed to visit their boy, who was almost a prisoner in military school. Napoleon wrote of the shock the visit gave his mother:
“When she came to see me at Brienne she was frightened at my thinness. I was indeed much changed, because I employed the hours of recreation in working, and often passed the nights in thinking about the days’ lessons. My nature could not bear the idea of not being first in my class.”
After finishing at this academy, Napoleon went to the military college at Paris. Father Bonaparte’s death, about this time, left the family poorer than ever. Sometimes Napoleon did not have enough to eat. But that did not prevent him from studying hard. His great ambition kept him from starving. Some time after his graduation he was assigned to a small command in Paris. “Red” revolutionists were trying to destroy the city. Young Napoleon thought it high time to stop them. A mob gathered in a public square threatening to kill people and burn their houses. He opened fire on the mob and cleared that square in short order. It was said afterward, “Bonaparte stopped the French Revolution with a whiff of grapeshot!”
From being “the Man of the Hour” Napoleon went on until he became “the Man of Destiny.” He was raised to the highest rank, and as General Bonaparte became commander-in-chief of the French army in Italy, where he gained brilliant victories over the Austrians. But the Austrians would not stay beaten, and while Napoleon was away in Egypt, Austria started in to win back its control of northern Italy.
When Napoleon returned to Paris he was the idol of the people. They elected him consul, a kind of president, of the French republic. The Austrians were pleased at this, as it would keep “the Little Corporal,” as the soldiers called Napoleon, in Paris. He would have to send another commander to Italy, and the Austrians had gotten such a start that they could win the victory before the French forces could go around the Alps.