Napoleon left the Ecole Royale Militaire, Paris, on z8 October 1 785.

Before heading south to join the La Fere regiment at Valence he went to

see his patron, Bishop Marbeuf, whose luxurious quarters were at the

Abbey Palace in St-Germain-des-Pres. Marbeuf gave him letters of

introduction to a cleric of equivalent standing in Valence, Monsignor

Tardivon. Although Napoleon was finished with Catholicism, he was still

prepared to milk it for worldly advantage.

Two days later he departed southward on the Lyons stage. His route

took him through Fontainebleau, Sens, Autun and Chalon-sur-Saone

where, on 1 November he took the water coach down the Saone to Lyons.

He completed his journey by post-boat and arrived in Valence on 3

November. Splendidly arrayed in the uniform of the La Fere regiment-

blue breeches, blue waistcoat, royal blue coat with red facings, pockets

braided in red and epaulettes with gold and silver fringes - he was

assigned to the bombardier company of Captain Masson d' Autevrive.

The garrison at La Fere had seven artillery regiments (in turn divided

into gunners, bombardiers and sappers) plus fifteen companies of

workmen and miners. The La Fere regiment had the reputation of being

a crack unit; it rose early, worked hard, and drilled as perfectly as an elite

infantry regiment.

Second Lieutenant Bonaparte was the Number Four man in one of

four bombardier companies. Each regiment contained twenty companies,

fourteen of gunners, four of bombardiers and two sappers. Each company

of about seventy men was commanded by a captain with three lieutenants

under him. In the French system, five companies made up a brigade

(commanded by a major), two brigades a battalion and two battalions a

regiment. Napoleon underwent ten weeks of basic training, drilling first

as a private, then as a corporal and finally as a sergeant. He afterwards

paid tribute to this method of learning from the grass-roots up and

attributed to it his famous 'common touch'.

On 10 January 1 786 he completed his probation as an officer. His

duties were scarcely onerous: mounting guard, looking after the men,

32

attending classes on mathematics, fortification, chemistry and physics.

There was plenty of free time. From the copious notes Napoleon kept we

know a great deal about how he spent his time: climbing Mont Roche

Colombe, skating, visiting the towns of Romans and Tournon. He

records that Valence, a town of s,ooo inhabitants, then chiefly notable for

its citadel and a plethora of abbeys and priories, had more than its fair

share of pretty women. Girls begin to be mentioned: on 4 December

1785, at a fiesta, he danced with a certain Mlle Mion-Desplaces. He was

friendly with a Madame Gregoire de Colobier and her daughter Caroline,

though the episode of eating cherries in the countryside with Caroline

sounds suspiciously like a Rousseauesque fantasy (Rousseau did likewise

with Mlle Galley).

Napoleon's principal problem was money. He had an income of r,rzo

livres a year, made up of a basic salary of 8oo livres, plus zoo livres royal

bounty and r zo livres lodging allowance. But because Carlo had died

virtually penniless and Letizia had lost the protection of Marbeuf,

Napoleon had to remit most of his earnings to Corsica to help his

impoverished family; Letizia had a total of r ,zoo livres a year on which to

keep herself and the younger children. Somehow or other she inveigled

money for extras out of the notorious skinflint Archdeacon Luciano, who

was the family miser. Napoleon therefore had to make do with very basic

lodgings. He found a noisy room on the first floor of the Cafe Cercle, at

the corner of the Grand-Rue and the rue du Croissant, where the

landlady was a fifty-year-old spinster, Mlle Bou, who washed and looked

after his clothes; the room and services cost just over eight livres. He took
his meals in a cheap cafe named the Three Pigeons in rue Perollerie.

At Valence Napoleon launched himself on a career as a would-be

writer. He penned a refutation of a book attacking his hero Rousseau. He

wrote a story called The Prophetic Mask about an Arab prophet who is

defeated after a string of victories and commits suicide along with all his

followers. Apart from underlining Napoleon's continuing fascination with

the world of the Middle East, the tale and the sixteen-year-old

lieutenant's notebooks testify eloquently at this time to a morbid

preoccupation with suicide. How seriously should we take this? Partly it

seems a fashionable Romantic pose, for Goethe's Werther, with his tired-

of-life melancholia, was a role model for educated young men of the time.

But part of Napoleon's reflections on suicide do suggest a genuine

pessimism about the world and the beginnings of a depressive illness. He

wrote:

Always alone in the midst of men, I return to dream with myself and

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give myself up to all the force of my melancholy. What madness makes

me desire my own destruction? Without doubt, the problem of what to

do in this world ... Life is a burden to me because I feel no pleasure

and because everything is affliction to me. It is a burden to me because

the men with whom I have to live, and will probably always live, have

ways as different from mine as the light of the moon from that of the

sun. I cannot then pursue the only manner of living which could enable

me to put up with existence, whence follows a disgust for everything.

The uneventful external tenor of life at Valence ended in August 1786

when the regiment was ordered up to Lyons to suppress a strike by silk

workers; three 'ringleaders' were hanged and the strikers effectively

cowed. Napoleon, who had often expressed his homesickness for Corsica,

applied for leave and was granted it, to run from r October. Since officers

in far-flung corners of France were allowed a month's travelling time in

addition to leave, Napoleon set out for Corsica as soon as the military

intervention in Lyons was complete. At Aix-en-Provence he visited his

uncle Fesch, who had not yet completed his theological studies, and also

Lucien, who had abandoned Brienne and come down to Aix to be trained

as a priest. He finally reached Ajaccio on 15 September 1786, having been

absent from the island for nearly eight years.

The reunion with Letizia and great-uncle Lucien was a particularly

joyous one, though clouded by the financial shadows that hung over the

family. Napoleon was shocked to find his mother doing all the household

chores when he arrived home. He enquired about Joseph and learned

that, in obedience to his father's wishes, he had given up all hope of a

military career and turned to the paternal study, law. Hearing that he was

now studying law at Pisa University, Napoleon wrote to him to say that

the family honour required that Letizia be relieved of the worst drudgery;

would Joseph therefore bring back a reliable servant? When Joseph came

home a few months later, he brought with him the Italian domestic maid

Saveria, who remained in Letizia's service for forty years.

To Joseph we owe a meticulous analysis of Napoleon's reading at the

time: the classical authors in translation, especially Plutarch, Cicero,

Livy, Cornelius Nepos and Tacitus; Macpherson's Ossian, Racine,

Corneille, Voltaire, Montaigne, Montesquieu and, above all Rousseau and

the Abbe Raynal. However, all the evidence suggests that Napoleon's

reading was wide rather than deep. His knowledge of Rousseau was

superficial and he was ignorant of much of Voltaire; he knew little of

Montesquieu and less of Diderot; most surprising of all, he had not heard

of Pierre Laclos's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, published four years earlier

34
and significant both because it was heavily influenced by Rousseau and

because Laclos, like Napoleon, was an artilleryman.

The entente between Napoleon and Joseph was particularly close

during this leave. The two brothers held long, animated discussions on all

the subjects that fascinated Napoleon. Joseph was said to have remarked

later: 'Ah, the glorious Emperor will never compensate me for Napoleon,

whom I loved so well, and whom I should like to meet again as I knew

him in 1786, if indeed there is a meeting in the Elysian fields.' But over

both young men a financial shadow continued to hang, and in particular

there was the problem of Carlo's mulberry groves. His investment was

predicated on a subsidy from the French government which had been

suspended because of financial retrenchment. Joseph had to return to his

studies in Pisa, so it fell to Napoleon to try to sort out the implicit breach

of contract.

On zr April 1787 Napoleon wrote to Colonel de Lance, his

commanding officer in the La Fere regiment, enclosing a medical

certificate stating that he was suffering from 'quartan ague', and

requesting an extension of leave on grounds of illness. This was granted

readily: Napoleon was informed he need not report back for duty until

December 1787. To obtain leave after only nine months' service and then

to be away from the regiment for what eventually turned out to be nearly

two years suggests an extremely complaisant attitude to the professional

officer by the ancien regime military authorities. Nor does there appear to

have been any liaison between government departments, for nobody

seemed to have questioned how Napoleon was too ill to be on military

duty yet fit enough to make a long journey to Paris to lobby the financial

bureaucracy about Carlo's mulberry groves. Such laxity was common in

the pre- r789 years: a colonel, for example, was required to be present

with his regiment for only five months a year.

Napoleon's financial mission began when he left Corsica on r2

September 1787. By the beginning of November he was installed at the

Hotel de Cherbourg in the rue du Faubourg-St-Honore in Paris. For the

first time he really got to know the French capital, having been a virtual

prisoner at the Ecole Royale; he made the most of his time, visiting as

many theatres as possible, with the Italian Opera a particular favourite.

His audience with the Comptroller-General of Finance was abortive:

nothing for the groves was offered. As if in compensation, Napoleon

received the six-month extension of leave he had requested before leaving

Corsica. This time he asked for prolongation on the ground that he

wished to attend a meeting of the Corsican Estates; since he did not ask

for pay, the request was granted.

35

The most significant event in the eighteen-year-old Napoleon's so-

journ in Paris was that he lost his virginity. On the freezing night of 22

November 1 787 he went to the Palais-Royal, then the red-light district,

and picked up a prostitute. The Palais-Royal, bordering the Louvre and

the Tuileries, had once belonged to Cardinal Richelieu and the due

d'Orleans. In 1 776 the gardens became the property of the due de

Chartres, a libertine, who engaged the architect Victor Louis to build a

theatre. While this was being constructed, a wooden gallery was put up,

running alongside the gardens. Known as the camp des tartares, by 1 784 it

was notorious for prostitution and petty theft; as the private property of

the due de Chartres, it was safe from police raids. Meanwhile the theatre

itself gradually took shape in the inner area of the Palais, which then

became a centre for culture in its widest sense, both elite and popular.

It was here that Napoleon made his first timid approaches to a fille de

joie. He approached one who proved willing to talk about her experiences

and what had driven her to this life. Encouraged by her ingenuousness,
he took her back to his lodgings. They talked, then made love. Napoleon

records that she was slight, slim and feminine and that she was a Breton,

from Nantes, who had been seduced by an army officer.

On New Year's Day 1 788 he arrived back in Ajaccio. The family's

financial situation had worsened if anything and Letizia still had four

children entirely dependent on her; in 1 788 Louis had his tenth birthday,

Pauline her eighth, Caroline her sixth and Jerome his fourth, and in

addition there were fees payable for Lucien at the Aix seminary and

Joseph at the University of Pisa. It is remarkable how quickly Napoleon,

as the only breadwinner, was accepted as the head of the family, and how

Joseph was quite prepared to defer to him. But by the time Napoleon

departed from Ajaccio on 1 June 1 788 he had at least had the pleasure of

seeing Joseph return from Pisa with the coveted title of Doctor of Laws.

The La Fere regiment was by now stationed in Auxonne. Once again

Napoleon dedicated himself to a Spartan existence. He lodged near the

barracks, at the Pavilion de la Ville, where his room had a single cell-like

window and was austerely furnished with just a bed, table and armchair.

There was even less to do here than at Valence, and appearance at parade

was required just once a week. In this period Napoleon became a genuine

workaholic, alternating his writing of apprentice pieces with omnivorous

reading, with special emphasis on history, Corsica and the theory of

artillery. He was already learning to get by with a minimum of sleep; he

rose at 4 a.m. , took just one meal a day at 3 p.m. so as to save money, and

went to bed at 10 p.m. after eighteen hours at his books.

The ascetic way of life seriously affected his health. Poor diet,

36

overwork and the cold and damp climate triggered physical exhaustion,

which made his body prey to malaria. His only real friends in the barracks

were the faithful Des Mazis and a Captain Gassendi, who appealed to
Napoleon on three separate counts: as a man of letters, a distinguished

geometer and an admirer of Corsica. But he fell out with an officer named

Belly de Bussy; a duel was arranged, but intermediaries forced the two

officers to compose their differences for the sake of the regiment.

Evidently Napoleon did sometimes try the patience of the senior

command, for he suffered a 24-hour arrest for reasons unknown; he was

shut up in a cell with just a single law book for company - an experience

he later claimed was useful when he came to draw up the Code Napoleon.

But on the credit side Napoleon attracted the attention of the

mathematics instructor, Professor Lombard, who in turn mentioned him

to the commanding officer of all troops in Auxonne, Baron Jean-Pierre du

Teil, as 'one to note'. Napoleon acquired an unrivalled knowledge of

projectiles and ballistics and also honed his talents as a draughtsman.

Among the most important influences on Napoleon the theoretician of

artillery were the general's brother, Jean de Beaumont du Teil, whose

handbook, published ten years earlier, stressed the massing of big guns at

decisive moments in battle. Napoleon was also influenced by Jacques de

Guibert, whose books stressed that a successful army depended on speed

and should be prepared to live off the land. Yet another influence was the

recently published work by Pierre Bourcet, which prescribed the

separation of army divisions for the purpose of rapid movement, followed

by their rapid concentration just before a battle.

Such was Napoleon's dedication that in fifteen months at Auxonne he

filled thirty-six manuscript notebooks with writings on artillery, history

and philosophy. In August 1 788 he was singled out for his special

aptitude and appointed commander of a demonstration company trying

to devise ways of firing mortar shells from ordinary cannon. The danger

of the work was offset by the opportunity to put favourite theories to the

test. Napoleon also became the only second lieutenant to sit on a select

regimental artillery committee. On z8 August he wrote to Fesch