‘Alexander Des Mazis, at your service.’
Napoleon looked at him warily, before he reached out and shook hands briefly. ‘Napoleon Buona Parte.’
‘An unusual name. And accent. Where are you from?’
‘Corsica.’
‘Ah … Corsica. I see.’
‘What does that mean?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Nothing.’
Des Mazis noted the suspicious expression in the other’s face and continued, ‘No, really. It’s nothing. I’ve never met a Corsican before. That’s all.’
‘Well, don’t worry. We don’t bite. Unless we have to.’
Des Mazis laughed. ‘Well said! Come on, Corsican, I’ll show you round the school, if you like.’
Napoleon did not reply immediately, still unsure if he liked, let alone trusted, this boy. But what harm could come of it? Besides, it would be good to know his way round the buildings and grounds as soon as possible. He nodded. ‘Thank you.’
The school turned out to be even more impressive than had been Napoleon’s first impression on walking through the main gate. There was a fine chapel, a library with more books than he had ever seen before, stables, a riding school, parade ground and gardens for recreation. In addition to the fine accommodation the school had the best teachers, and a full complement of cooks, nurses, grooms and other servants. The food, Des Mazis told him, was as good as could be found in any school in France.
‘They’ll soon feed you up,’ Des Mazis smiled. ‘Put some meat on your bones.’
‘I eat well enough already,’ Napoleon replied stiffly. ‘I’m here to learn to be a soldier, not a glutton.’
‘Maybe. But you can mix ambition with pleasure, you know.’
Des Mazis clapped him on the shoulder and steered the new boy towards a group of students walking down the path towards them.
‘Here, let me introduce you to some people.’
The only specifically military aspects of the curriculum provided by the school were fencing and fortifications. Riding, shooting and drilling were taught in the barracks of regiments based in and around Paris.As before, Napoleon’s success was mixed. Despite his teachers’ best efforts, they failed to eradicate his Corsican accent. After a very poor start at Latin and English, Napoleon was able to give up both subjects and take up more classes in maths and history, in which he impressed his teachers. However, the terrible quality of his handwriting was a source of despair for those who were called upon to mark his work.
Outside of classes Napoleon found that he continued to be the butt of practical jokes. Despite the captain-commandant’s fine pieties about the school’s ethos, Napoleon soon discovered that most of his fellow students treated him in a condescending, and sometimes contemptuous, manner.
Only Alexander Des Mazis considered himself a friend of Napoleon, and even then there were times when the thin-skinned Corsican blew up over a careless remark about his background, and there would be days of bitter sulking before he recovered from his outburst. On one such occasion the two boys were working in the library, searching for material on the siege of Malta. They had been told to prepare a detailed outline of the siege for presentation to the rest of the class. Alexander had been reading about the tough geography of the island and had been curious about how Malta compared to Corsica.
‘I’m not sure that it does,’ Napoleon replied. ‘From what I’ve read about Malta, it’s largely barren. My country is mountainous, and green. There’s snow in the hills in winter and lush pastures in spring …’ He gazed out of the window, into the crowded and filthy street below, where carts trundled past and many of the capital’s poorest inhabitants wore tattered clothes, their grimy faces pinched with hunger. He felt homesick and, as often before, he had a sudden powerful yearning to go back. To go home and never return to France. He turned from the window and saw Alexander looking at him with an amused expression.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Then why are you looking at me like that?’
‘It’s just that you said “my country”. I was under the impression that it was a part of France these days.’
‘These days,’ Napoleon nodded. ‘But not for ever. One day we will be free again.’
‘Oh! Come on, Napoleon!’ Alexander nudged him.‘You speak French, you’re in a French school in the French capital.Ten years from now, you’ll be a captain, or if you’re really good, a major in the French Army, and you’ll be bound by an oath of loyalty to the French King. How much more French can you get than that?’
Napoleon stared back at him for a moment, eyes wide and unblinking. Then he clenched his fist and struck his chest lightly. ‘In here I am Corsican. I always will be.Anyway, I doubt if all your aristocratic friends will ever let me forget it.’
‘My aristocratic friends?’ Alexander smiled. ‘I see. It’s
your
country, because of
my
friends. Is that it? Listen, Napoleon, you can’t do this to yourself.’
‘Do what?’
‘Cultivate this pig-headed pride in your origins. It’s your way of getting back at those who torment you.When you see French aristocrats, you see privilege and riches. Being a Corsican is all you have so you’ve turned it into some kind of priceless virtue.’
‘It is priceless, because it’s my identity. Being Corsican is what makes me what I am.’
‘Really? It seems to me that not being a French aristocrat is what makes you what you are.’ Alexander paused to let his words sink in before he continued. ‘The truth is, you can’t bear it. You can’t bear not having money or a title.’
‘Rubbish!’ Napoleon sat back in his chair and folded his arms.
‘I wonder,’ Alexander continued shrewdly. ‘I wonder what will happen once you have some money behind you. Money, perhaps a title, and some land. Then you’ll finally be as French as the rest of us.’
‘No I won’t. I am Corsican and that means far more to me than any fortune or title. It means I am better than these fops whose parents pay for them to come here. Corsica will be free again one day. Because of men like me. And what is more, we’ll take freedom by ourselves, and have a free country with liberty for all men. It won’t be like this,’ he swept his arm round to dismiss the world outside, ‘a tyranny propped up by parasitic aristocrats lording it over a nation of starving beggars …’
Alexander stared at him. ‘My God, you really mean that. Well, as a representative of the parasitic class, I’d just like to know why you have taken advantage of our hospitality these last six years. If Corsica is so fine a country, then why are you here?’ He smiled coolly. ‘It appears that it takes a parasite to know a parasite.’
Napoleon was still for a moment, caught between the desire to vent his fury on Alexander, and the realisation that much of what he had said was the truth.And the knowledge of the truth was too painful to contemplate.Too painful to apologise for. He let out an explosive exhalation of breath and stormed from the room, down the corridor, out across the courtyard, past the guard on the main gate and into the street.
For some hours he stalked along wide thoroughfares and down small side streets, face fixed in an angry frown as thoughts raced through his mind in a jumble of arguments and justifications for the position he had taken against Alexander. But at every turn he came up against the simple fact that he was taking advantage of a system he claimed to despise. Despite his protestations of loyalty to Corsica, every day he trained at the Military School brought him one day closer to adopting the uniform of the nation that had seized control of Corsica by bayonet and bullet. He was a hypocrite at best, and at worst a traitor.That word stung him into a fresh bout of denial and anger as he turned a corner and blundered into a man pasting a sign to a grimy plaster wall. The small jar of paste spilled down Napoleon’s front. The man took one glance at Napoleon’s uniform and then he dropped his brush and turned to run away as fast as his legs could carry him.
‘Hey!’ Napoleon shouted after him.‘What about my coat?You come back here!’
The man glanced over his shoulder, then ducked to one side and disappeared into a narrow dark alley.
‘Bastard!’ Napoleon yelled after him, then became aware that some of the people in the street had turned towards the commotion and were smiling at his misfortune. He scowled at them, then turned to the wall to see what the man had been pasting up. One corner hung limply and Napoleon had to roll it back with a hand before he could read.
Crudely printed, but bold, black letters proclaimed that the people of Paris had suffered enough. The rewards for all their back-breaking toil were starvation wages, slum accommodation and food unfit for consumption.The people could stand for it no longer. They should make their voice heard at a demonstration before the gates of the Tuileries on the following Sunday. Only their strength in numbers would make their masters aware of the dangerous mood of frustration and rebellion swelling up in the hearts of all right-thinking men.
Napoleon shook his head. He had seen posters like this before on the walls of Paris. A handful of agitators were behind them - small, powerless men, fighting for the hopeless cause of better conditions for the masses. The protest, like all before it, would be poorly attended, and easily swept away by a handful of troops, leaving the streets littered with broken bodies and smears of blood, and all would continue as before.These rebels were too few and too diffuse to challenge the State, and as long as the State could back up its position with sufficient deployments of force, nothing would change. It was pointless to resist, Napoleon concluded briefly. The people of Paris were already beaten. They had no one to lead them. All they had were themselves: a stolid mass of down-trodden slum-dwellers.
When he returned to the Military School he found Alexander waiting for him in his room. Napoleon stood in the doorway and cocked his head to one side.
‘Come to apologise?’
‘No. Not that.’ Alexander rose from the chair beneath the window and walked slowly towards his friend. ‘I was sent to find you.’
‘Who sent you?’
‘The captain-commandant.’
Napoleon felt a weary feeling of inevitability settle on him like a great weight. ‘Who is complaining about me now? That bastard of a dancing tutor? One of the students? … You?’
‘No. It’s not that.’ Alexander’s gaze wavered for an instant.‘The captain-commandant has received a letter. From your mother. Since I’m your only real friend here, he thought it would be best if I found you and brought you to his office so he can explain in more detail.’
‘Letter?’ Napoleon felt an icy sensation of dread creep up his spine. ‘What’s happened?’
Alexander bit his lip for an instant before replying.‘Your father has died.’
‘Died?’ Napoleon frowned. ‘He’s dead? How can he be dead? Was there an accident?’
‘It was an illness.’
‘That’s not possible. He was going to see a specialist. He wrote to me afterwards to say the problem was being treated. He wrote to me … What happened? Tell me.’
‘Napoleon, that’s all I know.’ Alexander gently took his arm. ‘The captain-commandant will tell you more. Let’s go.’
Napoleon stood still for a moment, then gave way and let his friend lead him away to the captain-commandant’s office.
He was treated sympathetically enough and, as was the custom in the Military School, he was offered the services of a priest to commiserate the tragic loss. Napoleon shook his head. He was still too uncertain of his feelings to want to unburden them in front of a stranger. His father was dead. Carlos Buona Parte was dead. It did not seem possible. And yet, the last time he had seen his father there had been no doubt about his failing health. But now that death was here, Napoleon could not encompass the reality that his father had gone. Images of his father poured through his mind. All at once Napoleon felt guilty for not having expressed his gratitude to his father for all that he had given to Napoleon in his short life.
Thirty-eight years.That was the extent of his existence, and he would never see the fruition of all his plans for his family. He would not be there to welcome Napoleon home to Ajaccio, and look proudly upon his son’s army uniform. To die with so much still to be fulfilled - how terrible a fate that must be, Napoleon reflected. Now all those plans and dreams had died with his father. They were already long dead and buried, weeks before.There was no point in grieving now, he told himself. He must not let this news unman him. He would use it as proof of his strength of character. Napoleon fought back his grief as he looked up at the captain-commandant.
‘Sir, I thank you for the offer of a priest. But I do not need any consolation.’
The captain-commandant smiled kindly. ‘There’s no shame in grief, Buona Parte. Death is with us always and we need someone there to help and console us.’
‘I don’t,’ Napoleon said firmly. ‘May I return to my room now, sir?’
The captain-commandant stared at him with pity, then nodded.‘As you wish. But the offer still stands. If you change your mind …’
‘Thank you, sir, but I won’t. Is there anything else?’
‘No … No, you may go.’
Chapter 28
There was no pause for mourning. Napoleon threw himself into his studies with renewed effort and did not mention his father’s death again. Those around him, even the students who had tormented him in the past, kept a respectful distance and left him alone. Even Alexander sensed that Napoleon had withdrawn into himself and their friendship cooled until the examination for officer aspirants was held that August of 1785. Even though he had been at the school for less than a year Napoleon insisted on being allowed to sit the examination. The captain-commandant reminded him that most boys took the exam after two, or even three, years of study at the Military School. None the less, Napoleon and Alexander took the exam along with nearly sixty other boys. When the results were read out to the students Napoleon had come in forty-second place and his friend fifty-sixth. Both were awarded the sword of graduates of the Military School and eagerly awaited news of their first postings.