Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 06.djvu/434

LEFT NAPOLEON I. 372 NAPOLEON I. on the slope of Mount Cotopaxi in Ecuador and flows S. E., emptying into the Amazon river, about 50 miles oelow Iquitos. Its total length is about 750 NAPOLEON AS A YOUNG OFFICER miles. It is navigable for nearly 400 miles and flows through a region rich in gold, rubber, and other products, which has been little exploited. active and important duties in his own country. When the directors were re- duced to extremities by the insurrection of the sections, in October, 1795, they gave him the command of their forces, which were only 5,000, shut up in the quarters of the Carousel and Louvre. Napoleon immediately adopted his plan of action, and planted cannon in all the streets round the assembly; and when the National Guard, to the number of 30,000, approached to drive out and ar- rest the Convention, he played on their ranks with grape-snot with such eff"ect that, after a vain struggle of many hours, the National Guards broke and flod, and were ultimately during the night surrounded in their different re- treats, attacked, disarmed, and sent to their homes. For this important serv- ice, the Convention appointed him sec- ond in command of the army of the interior, and subsequently, by the retire- ment of Barras, to the post of General of the Interior. Soon after Napoleon married Jose- phine Beauharnais he was, in February, 1796, given the command of the army of Italy, which for the last four years had lain inoperative at the base of the Alps between Savoy and the sea. A few NAPOLEON I. (NAPOLEON BONA- PARTE), called The Great, Emperor of the French; born in Ajaccio, Corsica, Aug. 15, 1769. He was the son of Charles Bonaparte, a noble Corsican of little fortune and his wife, Letizia Ramo- lino, a woman of great beauty, courage, and ability. Having early evinced a de- cided taste for military life, he was, at the age of 11, sent to the military school of Brienne, in Champagne, France, and in 1784, to the military school of Paris. In 1785 he was nominated sub-lieu- tenant of artillery, and sent on duty in his native country. In 1792 he was driven out of the island by Paoli, the ally of the English, and retired to Marseilles, where he lived in poverty with his mother and sisters. He was made a captain in 1793, and soon after he was employed to subdue Marseilles, a mission in which he was successful. The same year he was sent to join the be- sieging army before Toulon, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. For his serv- ices at Toulon, Napoleon was appointed Brigadier-General of artillery, with the chief artillery command in the S. of France; but having been suspected on days after his marriage he set out for acount of a mission to Genoa, his name his command. He found the troops in a was erased from the active-service list, most miserable condition. Descending He was ere long, however, called to like a torrent from the summit of the napoleon as first consul