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then a little pale-faced, Anglo-Indian child, of seven years, was brought from Bengal to England, in obedience to the inexorable sanitary law which forbade the rearing of the children of English parents under the burning Indian sun. On the way, the ship put in at St. Helena; and the native bearer, taking little Sahib William for a walk into the interior, halted beside the fence of a garden, within which a stout man might be seen walking to and fro, with his hands behind him. "That's Bonaparte," whispered the dusky cicerone, eagerly; "he eats a sheep every day, and as many children as he can catch."

Such was the aspect under which the greatest personage of modern history was first represented to little Thackeray; and the character ascribed to Napoleon the First by the Indian bearer was hardly an exaggeration of the popular notion concerning him. In England especially, "Boney" among the people generally was synonymous with "Bogey "-a kind of abstraction-a monstrous chimera, made up of all manner of contradictory vices and horrors. "Corsican upstart," "Corsican thief," "homicide," "ogre," "tiger" (sometimes, as in the Morning Chronicle of 1815, spelt tygor), were among the opprobrious epithets showered upon him in the days of the consulate and empire; and so great was the jealousy lest the favorable impression should increase, which, in spite of all the terrible tales about "Boney," undoubtedly existed in many parts of the United Kingdom, that young Bianconi, a travelling pedlar, who afterwards introduced "long cars" in Ireland, was arrested, and seriously warned to desist from selling little leaden effigies of Bonaparte, as a seditious and treasonable proceeding. And yet for this ogre the French nation continued, year after year, to make colossal sacrifices in men and money! Led by this "tygor," veteran soldiers faced enemy after enemy with a devotion worthy of the followers of Leonidas at Thermopylæ.

The name of this "upstart" represented to the great majority of the French nation, not only victory and triumph in the field, but safety and success at home; and sacrifices, perils, and difficulties were alike forgotten, when the shout of "Vive l'Empereur burst forth, and the well-known figure appeared, so conspicuous in a plain attire among the glittering throng of surrounding marshals. Never was a public character the theme of so much panegyric and of so much obloquy, as this wonderful man-whose fate it was to prove the very heights and depths of prosperity and misfortune-to stand for a while before the nations, a wondrous example of the space a single man may fill, and the influence he may

exert over the destinies of his time,-and to furnish in his fall the most tremendous lesson the world has seen of the instability of earthly power, and the frailty of human greatness.

In looking back at the history of Napoleon the Great, nothing is more remarkable than the almost diametrically opposite views taken by his various biographers, alike concerning his charac ter and influence. Some can see in him only the reckless soldier of fortune, subordinating all interests to his own selfish advancement, "wading through slaughter to a throne," and "shutting the gates of mercy on mankind;" others recognize in him the statesman no less than the warrior, and point approvingly to the mark of his hand on the whole social life and well-being of France Some can see nothing but the glory in his career; others, nothing but the wrong. Of Hazlitt, for instance, and the American Abbott, it may be said, as Macaulay said of Malcolm, the writer of the Life of Clive, that "their love passes the love of biographers, and they can see nothing but wisdom and justice in the actions of their idol." On the other hand, Lamartine, the republican, detests the French Emperor as the personification of tyranny; and Sir Walter Scott, whose lengthy "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte" is utterly unworthy of his genius and reputation. twists the facts to the advantage of the legitimate sovereigns, and mingles authentic proof and mere hearsay, in the fashion of a hasty and prejudiced compiler, holding a brief for a politi cal party. And yet these portraitures of Napoleon are all like him to a certain extent. Partiality and prejudice have warped them, and in many instances they are caricatures; but each represents, with tolerable accuracy, one phase of that character, in which good and evil, strength and weakness, were strangely mingled. That Napoleon committed great faults, and even crimes, no one who dispassionately reviews his history can deny; but it is equally certain that a positively bad man could never have gained the affections of his followers to the extent of making them forget all ties in the one engrossing idea of fol lowing him. "He had the genius to be loved." wrote the greatest female poet of our century; "then let him have the justice to lie honoured in his grave."

And here we propose to give a sketch of his marvellous career and his strangely compounded character, as they appear at a sufficient distance to remove the distortion produced by a near view of great objects. Sixty years have elapsed since the grave closed over the captive, before whom. in his days of greatness, emperors and kings ba

abssed themselves. Time has cleared away much prejudice; and now in the light of fuller and cer information, we will endeavour to bring before our readers Napoleon the ruler and the man, taking care to "nothing extenuate, nor set down anght in malice."

EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION. Napoleon Bonaparte, or, as the name was geneally written, "Buonaparte," the second son of Carlo Baparte, advocate, and his wife Letitia, was bora at Ajaccio, in Corsica, on August 15th, 1769. The family was of great antiquity, and undoubtedly noble, the name appearing in more than cze bro d'oro, or Golden Book, as the Italian reund of nobility were called, from the fourteenth century downwards. At the time of Napoleon's arta Corsica had recently been annexed to Fasse; and Pasqualide Paoli, afterwards known, during his visit in England, as the friend if Johnson and Goldsmith, and a distinguished member of the literary club, was carrying on a agate struggle to free his country from the Fe of France. Carlo Bonaparte was a friend,

i, for the time, the aide-de-camp of Paoli ; the afterwards wisely acquiesced in the new der of things; and in time was sent to the Frach Assembly of Notables as a Corsican

aty. The chief care of Napoleon and his fr brothers, Joseph, Lucien, Louis, and Jerome,

three sisters, Elise, Caroline, and Pauline, p his mother, a woman of heroic stamp, worthy to have been a Roman matron. Napoleon,

later days, frequently bore testimony to radmirable qualities, her firmness, courage, wisdom. Nothing overawed me," he

nothing disconcerted me. I beat one, I arabed another; I made myself formidable to whole family." His petulance was restrained, Ter, with a strong hand, by Mamma Letitia, *t abhorred falsehood, was provoked by disadence, and passed over none of the children's

We have a humorous picture of him at of six, with his stockings about his heels, pet and plaything of a girl's school, to which

sent, clinging to the hand of a certain ng Giacominetta, and making angry and terate charges, with sticks and stones, upon the

boys, who followed him in the streets, Ang satirical rhymes about his untidy stock. 25% and his dangling after a girl. "Napoleone amena calzetta, fa l'amore a Giacominetta," sang zee young satirists.

To bring up this numerous family suitably Ta task of no small difficulty; for Carlo aparte was poor. He was very glad to pro

cure a nomination for young Napoleon as a pupil in the military school at Brienne; and here the boy remained from March, 1779, till the end of 1784. Here he gained a most undoubted character for ability, and was by far the best mathematical scholar; Bourrienne, his schoolfellow, and afterwards his secretary, speaks of him as an écolier très-distingué. In his general behaviour he was proud and reticent. Conscious of being at a certain disadvantage from his poverty, he kept aloof from the sports of the rest; employing his leisure hours in reading Plutarch's Lives and similar works. He cared nothing for ornamental literature, and hated Latin. The attempted infliction of a degrading punishment threw the proud boy into a violent hysterical fit. During a severe winter he proposed to the pupils the construction of a fort of snow, which was attacked and defended with equal courage, until the mingling of stones in the snowballs, and consequent severe contusions, caused the authorities to interfere with prohibition. In 1783 he was. selected, as one of the then best scholars, to be sent to the military school at Paris in the following year; and thither he accordingly proceeded towards the end of 1784.

Bonaparte was just fifteen years old when he entered the military college at Paris; but he was already a man in intellect and judgment. Disgusted at the extravagance and luxury that prevailed in the college, he addressed to the subprincipal, Berton, after a residence of a few months, a remarkable document, in which he pointed out the folly of accustoming cadets, destined for a military career, to luxuries, as entirely new, to the majority of them, as they were unnecessary; and boldly suggested that, excepting matters of household drudgery, these young men would do better to wait upon themselves, than to depend on an expensive staff of servants. "Inured to a sober life, and accustomed to keep themselves neat," he wrote, "they would become more robust, would learn to brave the inclemencies of the seasons, and to bear with courage the fatigues of war, and they would inspire with respect and blind devotion the soldiers under their command."

MILITARY CAREER BEGUN; TOULON. The authorities of the college lost no time in putting the young critic forward for examination. He obtained a sub-lieutenancy in an artiliery regiment, before he had been in the military school a year; and the military college went on as before. Long afterwards, at a banquet where kings and princes were the guests, at Weimar,

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At Valence in Dauphiné, at Douay in Flanders, and at Auxonne in Burgundy, where his regiment was successively quartered, the traditions concerning the young artillery officer uniformly speak of his strict sobriety, energy: and marvellous devotion to study. As at Brienne, he was now preparing himself for his future career, while his brother officers were taking their pleasure. At Auxonne he lodged at a barber's. Years afterwards, passing through the town as a general, he paused at the door of his old quarters, and asked the barber's wife if she remembered, as a former lodger, a young officer named Bonaparte. "Yes," she replied, "and a very disagreeable young man he was. He was always shut up in his room; and if he did walk out, he never condescended to speak to any one." "Ah, my good woman," rejoined her questioner, "if I had passed my time as you would have had me do, I should not now have been in command of the army of Italy."

Then came the French Revolution, sweeping away with its tremendous tempest blast the landmarks of the wicked tyranny that for centuries had reduced the mass of the people to the condition of beasts of burden. In the terrible period of the Reign of Terror, the young officer became a lieutenant-colonel (chef de battaillon). While the republican government was maintaining a desperate struggle for existence against foreign foes from without, and disaffected royalists within its own quarters, various important cities-Marseilles, Lyons, Toulon-revolted. The last-mentioned town, which contained enormous military stores, had received an English fleet into its harbour; and the Committee of Public Safety, to whom the conduct of the war had been entrusted, were resolved to retake the place at all hazards. After Generals Cartaux and Doppet, two military incapables, one of whom had been a painter, the other a physician, had utterly failed to take the place, brave old General Dugommier was invested with the chief command before Toulon; Bonaparte commanded the artillery. "Let that young man alone, he knows more than thou," was the unceremonious injunction of Madame Dugommier, to her husband, who was startled at the boldness and novelty of the young colonel's plan of attack. This plan consisted in concentrating all

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efforts against a work called the Little Gibral tar," which was so situated that it commanded the harbour; consequently the capture of it would expose the British fleet to bombardment, and compel the ships to stand out to sea. Napoleon was the life and soul of the siege, looked to everything, and even, with his own hands, loaded a cannon, where a cannoncer had been shot dead. Doppet himselt says that at each visit to the outposts of the army, he was always sure to find the commandant of artillery at his post; he slept little, and that little ne took on the ground, wrapped in his mantle; ne hardly eve quitted his batteries." The siege of Toulon was the first chance afforded to Napoleon to distinguish himself; and he seize the occasion with an energy and ambition all his own.

HIS RULES FOR ENSURING SUCCESS. He next became general of artillery in the army of Italy; and here again General DumerLion, to whose division he was attached, wrote to the convention to say that "it was to the skil ful dispositions of the general of artillery that he in a great measure owed the success of the expedition." Never was there such a persistent worker as this indomitable young general. At a later period he became intoxicated with success, and giddy with the incense burnt before his shrine by unthinking worshippers; but in the ear. lier part of his career he was severely practical. "Victory," he was accustomed to say, "belongs to the most persevering; " and with him, this applied to victory over fortune generally, as well as to triumphs in the battle-field. He counted nothing done while anything was left to achieve. "There have been working kings," an American writer remarked, such as Alfred, Gustavus of Sweden, and Charles the Twelfth; but not one of them achieved a tithe of what this man did." Thoroughness and efficiency with him were the passports to honour and success. In his schooldays he had suffered by favoritism exercised towards those recommended by high birth or influential connections; and his sensible motto was "The career should be opened to talent." By careful study, and the exertion of that luminous Italian intellect of his, he made himself tho roughly master of whatever work he had to do and then he threw himself into the work heart and soul,with a confidence in his own powers, fully justified by the event. No fine theory that coul not be worked out to a practical result, found any favour with him. He had a profound contemp for the visionary schemers-the ideologists h called them-who devised impossible nostrum

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for the ills of the state. "I want more head and tongue," he said, when choosing men to fill the various departments of state. He cared thing for oratory and eloquence, though he nderstood how to fire the enthusiasm of his wers by appealing to their passions. Of the fqpeakers in parliamentary assemblies he ad. "Their strength lies in vagueness. They ald be brought back to the reality of facts. Fractal arguments destroy them. In the Counthere were men possessed of much more elomore than I had. I always defeated them with the simple argument two and two make four." is resicated undeviating industry and despatch a matters of business, on all with whom he came #atact. "I worked all day," was the excuse zade to him by a man who had left his duty unsted. Had you not the night also?" asked Sapon. "Ask whatever you please of me dopt time," he said to another; "that is beyond my power."

DAY OF THE SECTIONS; MARRIAGE.

The lacobins and extreme revolutionists of the borgs were profoundly dissatisfied at the reata that had set in, after the Reign of Terror. I thar intense disgust, the howling sansculottes

themselves disarmed, driven from the pubourts and tribunals they had clamorously Anated, and deprived of the daily stipend

to them by the terrorists, whom they had Apported. Several attempts at insurrection, made by the Jacobins, had been put down by zitary force; but now a far more formidable, as a better organized, opposition arose the sections of Paris, among which a at spirit had spread; and it was the Fatburg St. Germain, the haunt of many conled royaists and returned emigrants, from ce the Convention was now threatened with crganized attack, that should destroy it, as

of August, 1792, had destroyed the monhy. The Lepelletier" or "Filles St. Thomas" ten stood at the head of the conspiracy, and - thousand men prepared to join in the conat General Menou, who was in command of the troops who should have defended the Con

was feeble and vacillating; indeed, he made such concessions to the armed insurgents, that has own side, suspecting him of treachery, ated am. In great trepidation, the ConvenLaminated Barras, the principal of the Theridians, to the chief command; and Barras proposed his name to the Convention, that of the best man to hold command

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under him. "Are you willing to undertake the defence of the Convention?" asked the president. "Yes," answered the young general. "Are you aware of the magnitude of the undertaking?" resumed the president, apparently wondering how Barras could have selected this under-sized stripling for such a duty. "Perfectly," was the reply, "and," continued Napoleon, fixing his deep grey eyes upon the speaker, "I am in the habit of accomplishing what I undertake."

There was no question as to the resolution of such a man. The five thousand troops available

to confront the forty thousand national guards of the sections were put under his command. The sectionaries were highly incensed, and, under the command of General Damian, determined to attack the Tuileries, as on the celebrated 10th August. But Napoleon had posted his troops with such skill, and such consummate knowledge of the positions to be occupied, that the various columns of the sectionaries could not unite. Bonaparte's cannon swept the streets; and on this, the 13th Vendémiaire (5th October, 1795), he carried out the course he had recommended on the 20th June, 1792. The affrighted sectionaries fled, leaving nearly two thousand of their number dead in the streets. That evening Paris was quiet. The next day the Section Lepelletier and another were disarmed, and no further disturbance was to be feared. Bonaparte was rewarded for his services by being nominated second in command of the army of the interior; and early in the next year he was made commander-inchief of the army of Italy.

The year 1796 was memorable in Bonaparte's career as that in which he held his first separate command, and first astonished Europe with the splendour of his genius. It is remarkable also as the year of his first marriage. This event took place on the 11th of March, a few days before his departure to join the army. His wife, Josephine, the widow of General Beauharnais, a French commander, who had perished by the guillotine in the Reign of Terror, was a Creole by birth. She was born in the island of Martinique, the daughter of a planter named Tascher de la Pagerie. She used in her later days to be fond of telling how an old negress had once prophesied to her that she would become "greater than a queen." She was somewhat older than her husband, who was devotedly attached to her, though he never permitted her to influence him in practical affairs. She was kind-hearted, amiable, and fascinating, but somewhat thoughless and terribly extravagant, especially with regard to dress.

Bourrienne, who became Napoleon's secretary soon after this time, gives a tragical report of the disquietude, the alarm, and the fears of Josephine when her debts had reached some tremendous sum, and it became necessary to tell her husband about half their real amount. Once, under the Consulate, she was in debt 1,200,000f., about £48,000. Bourrienne got half the sum from the First Consul, from whom Josephine concealed the whole truth. Bourrienne, who had the duty of negotiating with the tradesmen, stared in wonder at the number of articles and at the prices charged. There were thirty-eight hats within a month, the feathers alone amounting to 1,800f. The abatements made by the purveyors showed the exorbitant nature of their charges. One equitable dealer, who took 35,000f. in payment of his account of 80,000f., boasted that he had still made "a very good profit."

HOW TO CONQUER; CAMPAIGN OF 1796-7. Nothing in all Napoleon's career produced a more splendid effect that the Italian campaigns of 1796 and 1797. At a later period he made war on a larger scale, and occupied a higher position; but as yet the people had not grown accustomed to his victories, which, like the tactics by which he gained them, had all the exciting qualities of novelty. "He came to an army in rags; our general was but a boy," says old Pierre in Thackeray's "Chronicle of the Drum;" and, indeed, seldom has a commander been called upon to take charge of an army in so deplorable a state. "Soldiers, you are naked and ill-fed," said the young general in his first address to the troops. "Government owes you much, and can give you nothing. . . . . It is my design to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world. Rich provinces and great cities will be in your power. There you will find honour, glory, and wealth. Soldiers of Italy! will you be wanting in courage or perseverance?" This, as perfectly well understood by the soldiers, meant"It is useless depending on the weak Directory in Paris. What you want-food, clothing, and money-you must win for yourselves from the enemy." To make war pay for war, and to render his army self-supporting was Napoleon's motto. as it had been Wallenstein's a century and a half before. Strength and swiftness have been with justice declared the two essentials of successful warfare; and sometimes celerity of movement may in some degree be made a substitute for numerical force. Bonaparte's policy was to attack his foes in detail in unexpected positions, to endeavour to annihilate one division of the foe

before another could come to its assistance. He thus exacted from his men an enormous amount of labour in the way of marching; but, as he him. self declared, he worked their feet to save their 4 heads. When he first joined the army, his youth -for he was only twenty-six-inspired some of the old generals who were to serve under him to attempt to give him some hints on policy and tactics. They little knew with whom they had to do. "Gentlemen," said the young commander-in-chief, "the art of war is in its infancy. The time has passed in which enemies are mu. tually to appoint the place of combat, advance hat in hand, and say, 'Gentlemen, will you have the goodness to fire?'" (Alluding to the courtesies interchanged between the English and French at Fontenoy.) "We must cut the enemy to pieces, precipitate ourselves like a torrent upon their battalions, and grind them to powder. Experienced generals lead the troops opposed to us. So much the better. Their experience will not avail them against me. Mark my words; they will soon burn their books on tactics, and know not what to do." And this was no vain boast. No man ever cared less for prescription and rule than Bonaparte, where he saw a shorter way than the usual one to his object. The whole campaign was a series of disastrous and bewildering surprises to the veteran generals opposed to him. No leader more fully possessed the invaluable art of concealing his intentions from the foe. Where he was least expected, he rushed suddenly, and, if possible, with superior numbers. on the foes' weakest point,—and succeeding in utterly bewildering his opponents by the rapidity and force of his blows; at Montenotte, on the 12th of April, he inflicted a great defeat on the Austrian general, D'Argenteau. This was the first of a long series of successes. "My title of nobility," he said long afterwards, "dates from the battle of Montenotte." Pushing onward to make the most of the victory, he attacked and vanquished the Austrians again on the 13th and 14th at Dego and Millesimo, thus preventing the purposed junction of the Austrian and Sardinian armies. The veteran Beaulieu, the Austrian general-in-chief, after losing 12,000 men in a few days, was obliged to retreat into Lombardy while General Colli, with his Piedmontese troops. was to defend the territory of his master, the King of Sardinia. But on the 20th the indefati gable young general defeated him at Ceva, and on the next day gained the important battle of Mondovi. Important magazines fell into the victor's hands, besides ten colours and 1,50 prisoners; and, true to his policy, Bonaparte im

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