Note Back to Main Text — Chapter VII

The various absences of Buonaparte from his regiment up to this time are antagonistic to our modern ideas of military duty. The subsequent ones seem simply inexplicable, even in a service so lax as that of the crumbling Bourbon dynasty. Almost immediately after Joseph's return, on the first of June he sailed for France. He did not reach Auxonne, where the artillery regiment La Fère was now stationed, until early in that month, 1788. He remained there less than a year and a half, and then actually obtained another leave of absence, from September tenth, 1789, to February, 1791, which he fully intended should end in his retirement from the French service.[18] The incidents of this second term of garrison life are not numerous, but from the considerable body of his notes and exercises which dates from the period we know that he suddenly developed great zeal in the study of artillery, theoretical and practical, and that he redoubled his industry in the pursuit of historical and political science. In the former line he worked diligently and became expert. With his instructor Duteil he grew intimate and the friendship was close throughout life. He associated on the best of terms with his old friend des Mazis and began a pleasant acquaintance with Gassendi. So faithful was he to the minutest details of his profession that he received marks of the highest distinction. Not yet twenty and only a second lieutenant, he was appointed, with six officers of higher rank, a member of the regimental commission to study the best disposal of mortars and cannon in firing shells. Either at this time or later (the date is uncertain), he had sole charge of important manœuvers held in honor of the Prince of Condé. These honors he recounted with honest pride in a letter dated August twenty-second to his great-uncle. Among the Fesch papers are considerable fragments of his writing on the theory, practice, and history of artillery. Antiquated as are their contents, they show how patient and thorough was the work of the student, and some of their ideas adapted to new conditions were his permanent possession, as the greatest master of artillery at the height of his fame. In the study of politics he read Plato and examined the constitutions of antiquity, devouring with avidity what literature he could find concerning Venice, Turkey, Tartary, and Arabia. At the same time he carefully read the history of England, and made some accurate observations on the condition of contemporaneous politics in France.