"
Two points are especially interesting in this report--the first that
Napoleon had a "submissive character"; the second that he would make
"an excellent sailor." The following year when another inspector
visited the school, he added a note that was more accurate. "Character
masterful, impetuous and headstrong"; and he decided that Napoleon
should enter the Military School at Paris.
Accordingly, in the Fall of 1784, he bade Brienne farewell without
regrets on either side, and turned his face toward the capital. No one
seeing this slender, almost dwarfed, figure with the thin face, high
cheekbones and sunken, inquiring eyes, would ever have imagined that
Paris was welcoming her future lord. History holds strange secrets
within her pages.
At the Military School, he chose the artillery as his particular branch
of service. To what good use he put his study of the field guns, we
find evidence in his first appearance on the field of actual warfare.
At the outset he made few friends; it seemed to be the bitter
experience of Brienne all over again. The trouble was that he was one
of the students being educated at the State's expense--a perfectly
proper system, which we ourselves follow at West Point and Annapolis.
But many of these French students came of wealthy families and, like
young prigs, looked down upon the King's scholars as "charity
patients.
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