Bullet Point #25 – Was Napoleon a good pupil?

We do not really know much about Napoleon’s young years, apart from the fact that he was a restive loner and a quick learner who loved his books. He frequented the infant classes at a girls’ school run by lay nuns in Ajaccio, though his name does not appear on the pupil lists. He also received French lessons from a certain religious, Abbé Recco. When he was nine years old, his father (supported by the French governor, Marbeuf, possibly Napoleon’s mother’s lover but probably not his father) won him a bursary to study on mainland France. After a brief period at the Collège d’Autun, on 15 May, 1779, Napoleon entered Brienne military college, a school where the children of distressed gentlefolk were trained for the army. It was here that the Legend was to get memorable anecdotes concerning his education and precocious intelligence, though the existing historical evidence sometimes removes some of the lustre…  Despite being appreciated by his teachers, he only got so-so results in French, Latin and Roman philosophy; his maths and history, however, were excellent. Having got precisely average results in his passing out exams, he was accepted at the Paris Ecole Militaire where, with his predilection for maths, he was directed towards the artillery. He then spent his first twelve months in Paris, from October 1784 to October 1785. In this prestigious school, whose premises still today close off one end of the Champ de Mars, he was noticed by his teachers, and they began to predict for him a brilliant future, though obviously not going so far as to see him one day becoming the sovereign of half of Europe. He also continued being a compulsive reader, hoovering up books on every subject and by every author, thereby acquiring for himself a vast education that never ceased to astound his contemporaries. That being said, his results on leaving the Ecole Militaire were mediocre to say the least (42nd out of 58), and he was appointed second lieutenant in the De La Fère regiment, being garrisoned with them in Valence and Auxonne, including brief stays in Douai and Lyons.