attack of vomiting. Father Patrault, the head of mathematics, a tall, red
faced man who was the only one at Brienne to discern Napoleon's true
intellectual potential, intervened and reproved the master who had
inflicted the punishment.
Napoleon's initial problem with the other boys was that he would not
consent to be a 'nymph', as the catamites in the school, well known to be
honeycombed with homosexuality, were called. This inevitably led to
beatings-up and fights. His sallow skin, his nationality and even his name
set him apart. His schoolmates converted 'Napoleone' into paille au nez
('straw nose') - an insult he still remembered at the end of his life. Great
mirth was occasioned by Napoleon's first encounter with ice, in his water
jug. 'Who's put glass in my water jug?' he cried, to hoots of laughter.
Napoleon's response to such humiliations was to insult his fellow-pupils
in turn, which led to further fisticuffs. But he won grudging respect from
his peers by not 'peaching' to the masters.
Yet the major source of tension was Napoleon's virulent Corsican
nationalism and his worship of Paoli. His schoolmates scoffed at Paoli; he
expressed his hatred for Choiseul; they jeered that the Corsicans were a
defeated people and were natural cowards; he replied that they were the
bravest of the brave and could easily have handled odds of four to one but
not the ten to one they actually faced; moreover, he would one day make
good his words by leading Corsica to independence. There is also this
highly significant outburst to one of his teachers: 'Paoli was a great man:
he loved his fatherland, and I shall never forgive my father, who was his
adjutant, for helping to unite Corsica to France. He should have followed
his fortunes and succumbed with him.'
The spiral of taunt, counter-taunt, playground fight and return match
between Napoleon and schoolmates continued. The arrival in 1782 of
another student from Corsica, Elie-Charles de Bragelonne, might
conceivably have been a source of relief, but Bragelonne was the son of
the French military commander in Bastia, and the strong anti-Napoleon
schoolboy faction twisted this to its own advantage. Knowing that
Corsicans hated Genoese even more than the French, they put
Bragelonne up to pretending he was Genoese. The sequel was
predictable: Napoleon flew at the boy and pulled out his hair in tufts,
leading to another fight. But there is a tradition that Bragelonne later
joined in Napoleon's anti-schoolmaster baiting and troublemaking and
even aspired to inherit his mantle in this regard, for he was expelled in
- There must have been some kind of rapport, for Napoleon later
made him one of his generals.
There are many accounts of Napoleon at Brienne by alleged