Napoleonic literature contains a very touching memory of his childhood, which tells us a good deal about the personality of the Emperor

Napoleonic literature contains a very touching memory of his childhood, which tells us a good deal about the personality of the Emperor. At the age of ten he entered the Royal Military School of Brienne-le-Château. Given the family's financial difficulties, a scholarship to this establishment, prestigious for people of his class, was a veritable gift of fate. Though the child could hardly grasp in full what a good education meant for him, especially given the hostile atmosphere in which he found himself.

The boy did not come from the French aristocracy, spoke little French and was far poorer than many of his schoolfellows, and so at once became an object of mockery.

His schoolmates called Napoleon's homeland a land of savages. He was not merely a pauper by the standards of the average pupil but a foreigner, an outsider, an Italian upstart. At first they called him «la paille au nez», “straw in the nose”, until they settled on calling him a plebeian dwarf.

Despite his tearful pleas to be taken home, his father, once a fiery fighter against the French invasion, refused, pointing out that dignity does not depend on money. Napoleon wrote that he cursed his father for this cruelty. The little Bonaparte's tutor at the school called the boy in for a talk and tried to explain to him that this school was one of the few opportunities in France for social advancement and future success for people of such origins. Napoleon understood that the world was unjust, but that he could change it, and returned to his studies with renewed vigour.

The boy endured bullying and abuse from a gang of hooligans, until the day came that changed his life. In the winter of 1783, when he was 14, Bonaparte's chief adversary, Alexandre de Fontaine, proposed staging a snowball battle in the snowy courtyard of the estate where the school was housed.

Napoleon found himself at the head of one of two factions of 50 pupils each. A lad still shorter than the rest, whom everyone tormented, he resolved to establish his authority at once, and ordered a fortress to be built, with additional defences installed in it. For the assault, missiles were laid out along the boundary wall of the camp, ammunition was prepared, reserves were drawn up, and a ransom was fixed for prisoners. Napoleon explained to his comrades what battle tactics were.

A friend asked why he was so serious, when it was all meant to be fun. Napoleon replied: the greatest pleasure is victory.

The rivals' defence was utterly useless, a circular line with a single entrance, instantly smashed by the tactics of Napoleon's attacking soldiers. He won on every front, and within a few hours had seized the red banner, and was never again an object of mockery. The tutor invited Bonaparte to tell the class how he had managed to win, which methods he had used and how the lessons of ancient battle tactics had helped him. No one laughed at him any more.

A brilliant pupil, in the autumn of 1784 the sixteen-year-old Napoleon obtained a place at the Royal Military School in Paris and became a lieutenant. The rest can be found in the history textbooks.