In a man's life, the years of youth, and intellectual and professional training count a lot. For Bonaparte, a young Corsican who arrived on the continent and often encountered the hostility of his contemporaries, the times spent in Autun (between January and April 1779) and even more in Brienne (until October 1784), then at Military school in Paris for a year and in Auxonne, partly explain his character and his military skills.
Upon leaving military school, Bonaparte was assigned to the La Fère regiment of the royal artillery corps garrisoned in Valence. He achieved this on November 3, 1785. He quickly obtained a first leave to return to his family in Ajaccio where he arrived on September 15, 1786. In the end, he went through Paris to request a second leave which was granted to him, allowing him to make the trip to Corsica again. But in the spring of 1788, the officer no longer had a choice: he had to return to his unit which, since December 1787, had been in Auxonne.
The arrival
It was therefore officially on June 15, 1788 (1) that the second lieutenant “Napolionne de Buonaparte” of the La Fère regiment arrived in Auxonne. It was in Burgundy that he perfected his craft as an artilleryman. He was assigned to the 2nd battalion, to the La Groshyère bomber company garrisoned at the Royal Artillery School. His room is on the third floor of the “City Pavilion”, number 16, staircase 1, south side, overlooking the city. Arthur Chuquet specifies that his "room which had only one window, was simply furnished, a bed, a table, an armchair, six straw chairs and a wooden chair" adding that "the climate of Auxonne did not suit him not at first. The surrounding marshes, the numerous floods of the Saône, and the pestilential vapors of the water that filled the ditches of the ramparts made the city very unsanitary, and in the summer of 1783, an epidemic which General Du Theil describes as dreadful had reached all the soldiers and almost all the officers. Napoleon had a continuous fever which besieged him for four days, left him alone for four days, then took him back. This illness weakened him and gave him delirium. The last months of 1788 were for him only a long convalescence. » The surgeon-major Bienvelot, originally from Metz, licensed in medicine, cured him and in the spring of 1789, he was completely recovered.
His first activities
The town has around 3,600 inhabitants which must be added more than a thousand students, artillerymen, and officers. He takes his meal (often only during the day) at the widow of the caterer Dumont, rue de la Saône (2), and has the habit of drinking a glass of milk at the café opposite his barracks. Sometimes, he is content to have lunch with “a good woman who lived in the Bauffre house, and who prepared corn porridge for him” (3) which, in the region and Franche-Comté, we call “gaudes”.
In Auxonne, as in Brienne, we also learn to live in society, to respect each other, and we learn about the rules of know-how. This is because the officer must not simply be a soldier, but also a man of the world. He must acquire real education: French, grammar, writing, science, drawing, history, mathematics, foreign languages, the art of fortification, but also horse riding, dancing, gymnastics, swimming, fencing, dress, manners, singing, or even music.
Certainly, Bonaparte is often isolated, quite reclusive in himself, spending little time with his comrades. Nevertheless, it is he who is designated by the other lieutenants and second lieutenants to write the draft constitution of the regulations of “La Calotte”, a society governing the life and relations between these officers.
Bonaparte did not only stay in Auxonne. In addition to the shooting at the Tillenay polygon, he had the opportunity to leave the city, both for his service and for his entertainment. Thus, he often retreats outside the city, near the small chapel of Notre-Dame de la Levée (Villers-les-Pots, on the road to Dijon), to walk and read all day, alone, in peace. , without neighbors or noise. He meditates quietly near the small Hermitage fountain which still exists at the edge of the woods. He also goes to swim in the Saône. He even almost drowned there, having suffered a cramp. He loses consciousness, sinks, and is carried by the current onto a sandbank. He comes to his senses as his head emerges. Alone, he manages to return to the shore and is helped by his comrades worried at no longer seeing him. There, he vomited before getting dressed and returning to the barracks without damage. Another time, the officer's friends took him with them ice skating on the frozen moat. Tired, he abandons the game quite quickly while his two friends continue. The ice breaks and the skaters perish. This could have been Bonaparte's fate. Finally, another day, having annoyed some comrades during a discussion on the banks of the river, they grabbed him and pretended to throw him into the water.
It was also in Auxonne that Bonaparte certainly had his only duel fight, with a Dolois, Louis Denis Catherin (known as Denis) Grosey (1750-1817) who injured him with a light sword blow. Later, when Bonaparte became First Consul, Grosey wrote to him asking for a job, specifying: "If you do not recognize me, you will remember the young Dolois who gave you a sword blow, on the rampart of the Swan in Auxonne. » Napoleon named him president of the court of Lure in Haute-Saône and imperial prosecutor in Belfort.
Readings and meetings
He often reads in his room, writes, thinks, and takes notes. His main readings concern the artillery profession of course, but also Antiquity, history, geography, philosophy, natural history, religion, Tacitus, Montaigne, Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Livy, Plato, Abbot Raynal, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre... He goes to consult the newspaper at the office of the postmaster Lardillon. The food accounting officer Bersonnet makes his library available to him. He was placed under arrest for a day and a night. Locked up, he finds a book there, Le Digest, and begins to read it completely. At the end of the sanction, he is astonished to be already free, having never stopped reading and not seeing the time pass. He remembers this forced reading so much that during a meeting of the Council of State aimed at drafting the Civil Code, he pronounces complete passages.
He sometimes goes out to meet local notables. He was thus received at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Lombard, at the home of the director of the arsenal and artillery of Burgundy Laurent Pillon d'Arquebouville - rue du Chénois (5) -, in the salons of Madame de Berbis (at her home in Auxonne or even ten kilometers away, in his castle of Maillys) and with the field marshal of Teil in his private mansion (6). He also frequented the war commissioner Jean-Marin Naudin, whose wife lived for fifteen years in Corsica. During these evenings, we exchange ideas, we talk about literature, but we also play the lottery.
In 1901, in his reception speech at the Academy of Sciences, Belles Lettres and Arts of Besançon, Gaston de Beauséjour evoked the festivities at the Château de Pesmes in Haute-Saône (about 18 km from Auxonne), adding: "To these festivals, Young officers from neighboring garrisons were also sometimes invited. Among those who attended the balls given at the Château de Pesmes, there is one that we must mention in passing, although nothing then brought him to the attention of the public. He was a young artillery second lieutenant from the Auxonne garrison, destined to make a big splash in the world, his name was Bonaparte. » Later, Dr Bourdin, former mayor of Pesmes, specified that Bonaparte was then staying with the family of his “friend Agnus” (7) from Dole, whose sister Anne Charlotte lived in Pesmes. The second lieutenant would not only have come for the celebrations at the castle but perhaps also for “the grace and beauty” of three Perrin sisters.
Sometimes, Bonaparte went to Dole or Authume (about ten kilometers from his garrison) where he was received by the knight Masson d'Authume, owner of the Authume castle and captain of a company of gunners in the Auxonne regiment. He also went to Villers-Rotin, on the road to Dole, where he found a young girl named Marie Merceret, six years his senior, under a large lime tree planted on the occasion of the birth of Louis XIII in 1601 near the church (8).
Revolutionary movements
His service also took him to Seurre in April 1789 to suppress a local revolt. At twenty years old, in the absence of his captain and first lieutenant, he is responsible for leading a detachment of a hundred soldiers. He keeps his cool and prevents any conflict that could have escalated. Faced with the rioters, relying on his meager troops, Bonaparte said: “Let honest people go home, I have orders only to shoot at the rabble. » Faced with this demonstration of force, refusing to be likened to the rabble, the crowd disperses and everyone goes home. The detachment remained in Seurre for almost two months to secure the town. During this stay, Bonaparte was invited to dinner by the governor of Auxonne, Claude de Thiard de Bissy, at his château in Pierre-de-Bresse. He will go to celebrate Easter 1789 with Mr. Prieur, receiver of the salt granary.
Five days after the storming of the Bastille, a riot broke out in Auxonne. The collector's house is looted. Insurgent bands roam the city. It is again to Bonaparte that we entrust the task of restoring calm. He commands 450 soldiers and is said to have harangued the insurgents for three-quarters of an hour. The revolt ceases and thirty-three leaders are arrested and put in the dungeon.
Having benefited from a new leave, Bonaparte left Auxonne in the first days of September 1789. Once again, he extended his stay in Ajaccio and did not return to Burgundy until February 10, 1791. He took with him his younger brother Louis with whom he shares his room number 10 which, this time, is located on the 2nd floor on the north side (therefore overlooking the courtyard of the barracks and no longer the city), staircase 3. It is this room that we now visit, with two rooms and, in one, a bed, a small table, a writing desk, a fireplace, and some belongings (9). According to the notes of the second-hand dealer Gavet who subsequently purchased some of the furnishings provided by the town of Auxonne for the barracks, the “furniture in Mr. Bonaparte’s bedroom” included an oak chest of drawers. with two drawers, a table with four legs, also in oak, with one drawer, a pair of cast iron andirons, with shovel and tongs, then an octagonal bowl, in earthenware, with its pot. The future king of Holland, Louis Bonaparte, made his first communion in Auxonne, with Abbot Morelet.
The Letter to Buttafoco
It was in Ajaccio, more precisely in the country residence of the Bonaparte family, the Millellis, that he wrote his Letter from Mr. Buonaparte to Mr. Buttafoco, deputy of Corsica in the National Assembly, attacking the deputy of the Corsican nobility Mattéo Buttafoco. The Patriotic Club of Ajaccio encouraged him to publish it. Back in Auxonne, Bonaparte looked for a printer. He was advised to go to Dole, fifteen kilometers from his garrison, to meet Joseph-François-Xavier Joly (1750-1844), a Nancéian who had settled in the typographic workshop of Dole in 1784 and had married the girl of Jean-François Daclin, heir to a printing workshop which had operated in Besançon since 1712.
Joly recounts his meetings with the artillery officer: “Bonaparte came to my house one day from Auxonne (10), at 8 a.m. He was dressed in a carmagnole and white linen pants striped with a blue, round hat, asking me to print his Letter to Buttafoco for him. Having given me the manuscript, the body of which was not in his hand, but only many corrections, I made him sign it, we did not agree on any price. He asked me the day he had to come back to check the proof of the first printing sheet: he said he would get there at 8 a.m. Two days later, at precisely this time, Bonaparte was in my room. He read the proof without sitting down and only wanted to take a finger of wine, despite my entreaties. He again asked me the appointed day on which he was to return, at the same time, to see the rest of the tests; he added that he would bring his younger brother, who was curious to see how printing was done. He left immediately because he had to be in Auxonne at 11 a.m. sharp. Two days later, Bonaparte and his younger brother Louis (then aged 9 to 10) were at the printing works at 8 a.m., dressed in the same striped canvas, in pants and carmagnole.
A few moments later, Father Jantet (11), my friend, and professor of mathematics at the College of Dole (from which I printed the Lessons of Mechanics), arrived. We had lunch together. Bonaparte was content with a piece of pancake and a glass of wine; he talked mathematics with the professor, and said little about the affairs of the day; but what he said about it was like the summaries of a book; it gave reason to guess his thoughts. He told us that his brother Louis had a great taste and facility for mathematics and that he already knew the equations of the 1st, 2nd, and even 3rd degree. While Bonaparte quickly read the proof of his pamphlet, Abbé Jantet asked several mathematical questions to young Louis who answered pertinently, finishing his lunch better than his brother. Bonaparte and Jantet talked for a while longer and showed that they were happy with each other. The two brothers left on foot as they had come, arriving the same day at noon in Auxonne, at the appointed time (8 leagues of post in a morning). “I will see you again soon for my work on Corsica,” Bonaparte said to me as he left. I sent him a hundred copies of the pamphlet that he had asked for. Sometime later, I had the opportunity to go to Auxonne with a friend. While he was going about his business, I went to see Bonaparte, lodged in the barracks. There he occupied two whitewashed rooms, four straw chairs, a large table (on which various plans, tactical works, books, and mathematical instruments were spread), a poor chest of drawers, and a small mirror on the mantelpiece. made up the furnishings of the 1st bedroom; a bed without curtains in which the two brothers slept, two chairs, and a small table, these are the furniture of the second bedroom; in all, the cramped confines of barracks furniture. However, I had noticed a sort of chest lined with yellow nails. “You wouldn’t guess if I didn’t tell you,” said Bonaparte to me, “what’s in this chest? We fired our chaplain; I have been entrusted with the chalice, the ciborium, and, all the priestly ornaments: I have everything I need to say mass to you.” He then opened the trunk to show me these objects. He called his younger brother who was in the bedroom where he was studying: “Louis, do you know sir?” As the young man hesitated while looking at me: “How! You don’t recognize the one who made you eat such a good cake!” “Ah! It’s Mr. Joly.” Then he came and kissed me. Bonaparte told me that orders to leave were awaited day by day and that was the reason why he had not yet returned to Dole; that, however, he would not have left without talking again with me and with Abbé Jantet, of whom he highly valued. He offered me dinner with him in his pension, which I could not accept, and paid me in assignats of 5 livres, called corsets (12), what he owed me, and after having spoken to me again about his work to print and gave some testimony of satisfaction, he shook my hand, his younger brother kissed me again and I left them. I only ever saw Bonaparte again during his visit to Dole, on his way to Marengo. I saw him quite closely, but I did not speak to him. »
Ultimately, the twenty-one-page pamphlet was printed in one hundred copies by Joly but without mention of printer or date. Simply, below Buonaparte’s signature, is written: “From my cabinet Demillelli, January 23 of the second year. » We can imagine that this means that the manuscript was completed on January 23, 1791 (second year of freedom acquired in 1789), just before Ajaccio left for the continent.
The future emperor also planned to have Joly print a Political History of the Island of Corsica in two volumes, but the project never came to fruition.
In the surrounding area
Even if his stay in 1791 was brief, Bonaparte was active, both in his regiment and for visits to the surrounding area. We know, for example, that he went several times to Nuits-Saint-Georges where Captain Gassendi, who had just married, invited him to dinner. With Alexandre des Mazis, he will also visit the cannon foundry of Ignace de Wendel in Le Creusot and Montcenis (13). He finally went on May 23, 1791, to Citeaux Abbey.
Shortly after, Bonaparte left Auxonne on June 14, 1791, to go to the 4th artillery regiment garrisoned in Valence as first lieutenant. He would have briefly returned to Auxonne in the last days of August 1793 when, as captain, his mission was to accelerate shipments of Vonges powder intended for the army. He returned there one last time, on May 8, 1800, when he went via Switzerland to Italy where this second campaign would lead to the victory of Marengo. As usual, he only stayed there for a short time (only two hours) and the population came to see him and speak with him in the large room of the artillery directorate.
(1) The former mayor of Auxonne, Claude Pichard, editor in 1857 of a small work on Napoleon Bonaparte in Auxonne, gives the date of May 1, 1788.
(2) Currently 5, rue de Vauban
(3) Claude Pichard, Napoléon Bonaparte at Auxonne, p. 19.
(4) Napoleon remembers General du Theil as far as Saint Helena. In his will, the Emperor bequeathed to the “son or grandson of Baron Duteil, lieutenant-general of artillery, former lord of Saint-André, who commanded the Auxonne school before the Revolution, the sum of 100 000 francs, as a souvenir of gratitude, for the care that this brave general took of us when we were as lieutenant and captain under his orders.”
(5) Currently 2 bis, rue Carnot.
(6) 25 of current rue Thiers.
(7) They are either Jean-Pierre Étienne (born in 1765) or his brother Jean-Baptiste Bonaventure (born in 1779), both from Dole and son of Jean-Baptiste Agnus.
(8) Subsequently, Marie Merceret marries Mr. Paperet. She keeps a silver ring and a scarf given to her by the young lieutenant Bonaparte.
(9) Chief Warrant Officer Hardy, traditions non-commissioned officer, shows the room for groups and on request. Truly passionate about Bonaparte's stay in Auxonne, he punctuates his visits with numerous anecdotes, showing the library, the room occupied by Napoleon and Louis Bonaparte in 1791, then the traditions room of the 511th regiment of the Crew Train.
(10) Joly then lived at 44, rue de Besançon in Dole.
(11) Antoine François Xavier Jantet (1747-1805), professor at the Orphelins of Dole in 1768, then at the Royal College of Arc in 1773, later appointed professor at the Central School of Jura in 1797, and professor of transcendent mathematics at the Besançon high school in 1802. Remembering him, Napoleon would have offered him a seat at the Institute, but Abbot Jantet's modesty forced him to refuse.
(12) From the name of the signatory of the assignats.
(13) Claude Pichard indicates that these visits took place in December 1789.
Bibliography
Arthur Chuquet, The youth of Napoléon, Armand Colin, 1898. I Julien Feuvrier, Napoléon Bonaparte in Dole, Old bookstore Honoré Champion publisher, 1911. I Claude Pichard, Napoléon Bonaparte in Auxonne, X.-T. Saunie, 1857.
Classes at the Lombards
In the report he established in 1789, the inspector general of artillery La Mortière wrote: “I have just cited the mathematics professor responsible for theoretical instruction. Few have so much talent for leading young people to the sublime knowledge of mathematics, he is not limited to public demonstrations in the halls; he holds conferences at his home to which young people who want to acquire more extensive knowledge go and many know how to benefit from them. He often takes them into the field to apply the principles of geometry to the drawing of plans and the layout of field fortifications. »
His main friends
Bonaparte's main friends and colleagues are Alexandre des Mazis (who had already been his comrade at the Paris Military School then in garrison in Valence), his captain Jean Jacques Basilien Gassendi, future general and general inspector of artillery, the future general then prefect of Morbihan Joseph-Louis-Victor Jullien de Bidon, captain (and future general) Jacques Marie Charles de Drouas de Boussey, Jean André Louis Rolland de Villarceaux (future prefect of Tanaro, the Apennines then Gard), the future first inspector of artillery Jean Barthélemot de Sorbier, David Victor Belly de Bussy (whom he named colonel of artillery and aide-de-camp in 1814 after the battle of Craonne), the knight Jacques Philippe François Masson d'Authume, captain who emigrated in 1792 and whom the First Consul appointed curator of the library of the School of Artillery and Engineering Application in Metz in 1803, Jean Baptiste Le Lieur de Ville-sur-Arce (future general intendant of parks and crown gardens) or the Dolois Claude-Joseph de Malet, brother of the future conspirator of 1812, captain who resigned in 1792 so as not to serve the Revolution.
The statue by Jouffroy
In addition to Lieutenant Bonaparte's room, the town of Auxonne still has, on the Place d'Armes, a beautiful statue of Bonaparte, due to François Jouffroy, inaugurated on December 20, 1857. The base is decorated with four bas-reliefs of bronze chronologically representing four historical episodes: Lieutenant Bonaparte meditating under a tree, General Bonaparte at the Pont d'Arcole, the First Consul presiding over a session at the Council of State, and finally the Coronation of Napoleon.
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