of political
experiments, the like of which the world had never seen before.

NAPOLEON

NAPOLEON

NAPOLEON was born in the year 1769, the third son of Carlo Maria
Buonaparte, an honest notary public of the city of Ajaccio in the island
of Corsica, and his good wife, Letizia Ramolino. He therefore was not
a Frenchman, but an Italian whose native island (an old Greek,
Carthaginian and Roman colony in the Mediterranean Sea) had for years
been struggling to regain its independence, first of all from the
Genoese, and after the middle of the eighteenth century from the French,
who had kindly offered to help the Corsicans in their struggle for
freedom and had then occupied the island for their own benefit.

During the first twenty years of his life, young Napoleon was a
professional Corsican patriot--a Corsican Sinn Feiner, who hoped to
deliver his beloved country from the yoke of the bitterly hated French
enemy. But the French revolution had unexpectedly recognised the
claims of the Corsicans and gradually Napoleon, who had received a good
training at the military school of Brienne, drifted into the service of
his adopted country. Although he never learned to spell French correctly
or to speak it without a broad Italian accent, he became a Frenchman.
In due time he came to stand as the highest expression of all French
virtues. At present he is regarded as the symbol of the Gallic genius.

Napoleon was what is called a fast worker. His career does not cover
more than twenty years. In that short span of time he fought more wars
and gained more victories and marched more miles and conquered more
square kilometers and killed more people and brought about more reforms
and generally upset Europe to a greater extent than anybody (including
Alexander the Great and Jenghis Khan) had ever managed to do.

He was a little fellow and during the first years of his life his health
was not very good. He never impressed anybody by his good looks and he
remained to the end of his days very clumsy whenever he was obliged
to appear at a social function. He did not enjoy a single advantage of
breeding or birth or riches. For the greater part of his youth he was
desperately poor and often he had to go without a meal or was obliged to
make a few extra pennies in curious ways.

He gave little promise as a literary genius. When he competed for a
prize offered by the Academy of Lyons, his essay was found to be next to
the last and he w