Part 1

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FAMOUS

LEADERS AMONG MEN

BY

SARAH KNOWLES BOLTON

AUTHOR OF "POOR BOYS WHO BECAME FAMOUS," "GIRLS WHO BECAME FAMOUS," "FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS," "FAMOUS AMERICAN STATESMEN," "FAMOUS MEN OF SCIENCE," "FAMOUS EUROPEAN ARTISTS," "FAMOUS TYPES OF WOMANHOOD," "STORIES FROM LIFE," "FROM HEART AND NATURE" (POEMS), "FAMOUS ENGLISH AUTHORS," "FAMOUS ENGLISH STATESMEN," ETC., ETC.

The longer I live, the more certain I am that the great difference between men, the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is _energy_ and _invincible determination_.--SIR THOMAS FOWELL BUXTON.

NEW YORK: 46 EAST 14TH STREET THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. BOSTON: 100 PURCHASE STREET

COPYRIGHT, 1894,

BY

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

C. J. PETERS & SON, TYPE-SETTERS AND ELECTROTYPERS, 145 HIGH STREET, BOSTON.

TO MY SON

Charles Knowles Bolton.

PREFACE.

Napoleon said, "My maxim has always been, _a career open to talent without distinction of birth_." It will be seen in these pages that most of these men rose to leadership by their own efforts. Napoleon was poor, and often without employment in early life, but his industry, good judgment, will, and ambition carried him to the heights of power.

Nelson was the son of a minister, whose salary did not support his numerous family, but his boy had the energy and force that won success.

Bunyan, a travelling tinker, twelve years a prisoner in Bedford jail, could, while poor and in prison, write a book that is read more than any other in the world, save the Bible.

Arnold, through love for his work, and his untiring energy and good sense, became the ideal teacher.

Phillips and Beecher, both eloquent, the latter beginning his labors on a salary of $200 a year, were led into their great careers through a great motive,--their hatred of slavery.

Kingsley, the Christian socialist, knowing that the pulpit must help in the solution of the labor problem, lived and preached the brotherhood of man.

Sherman, the son of a widow, adopted by his father's friend, had early failures, and won his place of distinction with Grant and Sheridan by his own ability.

Spurgeon, whose work was marvellous, was poor, and without a college education.

Phillips Brooks, whose death was an irreparable loss, made his way even more by his sincerity and unselfishness than by his eloquence.

Napoleon, who was especially fond of biography and history, was always eager to learn what qualities produced greatness or success. Perhaps some will find it interesting to trace in these pages what enabled these men to be leaders in various fields.

S. K. B.

CONTENTS.

PAGE. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 1

HORATIO NELSON 87

JOHN BUNYAN 123

THOMAS ARNOLD 149

WENDELL PHILLIPS 175

HENRY WARD BEECHER 217

CHARLES KINGSLEY 261

GENERAL WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN 288

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON 333

PHILLIPS BROOKS 368

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

"The series of Napoleon's successes is absolutely the most marvellous in history. No one can question that he leaves far behind the Turennes, Marlboroughs, and Fredericks; but when we bring him up for comparison an Alexander, a Hannibal, a Cæsar, a Charles, we find in the single point of marvellousness Napoleon surpassing them all....

"Every one of those heroes was born to a position of exceptional advantage. Two of them inherited thrones; Hannibal inherited a position royal in all but the name; Cæsar inherited an eminent position in a great empire. But Napoleon, who rose as high as any of them, began life as an obscure provincial, almost as a man without a country. It is this marvellousness which paralyzes our judgment. We seem to see at once a genius beyond all estimate, a unique character, and a fortune utterly unaccountable."

Thus wrote John Robert Seeley, Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, of the man whom he regarded as the greatest enemy England has ever known.

Napoleon has been more praised and villified, probably, than any man in history. Lanfrey, though careful as to facts, and Taine, are bitter, always ready to impute sinister motives. John S. C. Abbott is adulatory; Walter Scott cannot be impartial; and Bourrienne, the discarded private secretary, Madame de Rémusat, and the Duchess d'Abrantès, must be read with allowance for prejudice. Thiers, in his twenty volumes on "The Consulate and the Empire," gives a most valuable picture of the times, friendly to the great leader; John Codman Ropes's "First Napoleon" is able; and the life by William O'Connor Morris of Oxford is generally fair and interesting.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio, in the Island of Corsica, Aug. 15, 1769. This date has been disputed by some authors, who claim that Napoleon was born Jan, 7, 1768. Colonel Jung, in "Bonaparte et son Temps," thinks the dates of birth of Napoleon and his brother Joseph were exchanged by the parents, who wished, in 1778, to send Napoleon to a military school at Brienne supported by the State, and he must needs be under ten years of age.

As Corsica became subject to France in June, 1769, some persons believe that Napoleon himself changed the date of his birth from 1768 to 1769, that he might appear to the French nation as a French subject; but the date, Aug. 15, 1769, is usually accepted as correct.

The Bonaparte family were originally from the nobility of Florence, where they had taken a somewhat prominent part in politics and literature. They had lost their fortune; and Charles Bonaparte, the father of Napoleon, earned his living by the law. He was an eloquent man, and an adjutant under Pasquale Paoli, a patriot of Corsica. This island, in the fourteenth century, was under Genoa. When it gained its independence under Paoli, such rights as Genoa still possessed she sold to France. As a result, in 1769 a French army of twenty-two thousand subjugated the island, and Paoli fled to England, where he lived for twenty years.

Charles Bonaparte, at eighteen, married a girl not yet fifteen, Letizia Ramolini, descended from a noble family of Naples, a person of unusual beauty and strength of character. Although so young, she entered heartily into the warfare for Corsican independence, and shared the perils of her husband at the front.

Napoleon was the fourth of her thirteen children, the eldest, a son, and the second, a daughter, both dying young. He was born in the midst of war. He wrote Paoli, in 1789, when he was twenty years old, "I was born when my country was sinking; the cries of the dying, the groans of the oppressed, and the tears of despair surrounded my cradle from my birth."

The Duchess d'Abrantès tells this story of Napoleon's boyhood. When he was seven years old, being accused by one of his sisters of eating a basket of grapes and figs, although he denied the offence, he was whipped and kept on bread and cheese for three days.

On the fourth day a little friend of the family arrived at the home, and confessed that she and Napoleon's sister, Marianna (afterward Elisa) had eaten the fruit. The lad was asked why he had not accused his sister, and replied that he suspected that she was guilty, but said nothing out of consideration for the friend.

After the submission of Corsica to France in 1769, Count Marboeuf was appointed viceroy of the island. He became a friend of the Bonapartes; and Charles, the father, was made king's assessor to the Judicial Court for Ajaccio. Through Marboeuf's influence three of the Bonaparte children were placed in fine schools,--Joseph, Marianna, and Napoleon, the last at the military school of Brienne, near Paris. Here he remained for five years. He was a quiet, studious lad, devoted to Plutarch's Lives and Cæsar's Commentaries. He was always trying to find out what made certain men great. He was easily at the head of his class in mathematics. His industry and perseverance were astonishing.

"During play-hours," says Bourrienne, "he used to withdraw to the library, where he read works of history, particularly Polybius and Plutarch. I often went off to play with my comrades, and left him by himself in the library."

He was cold in manner, talked very little with his classmates, and felt keenly his poverty and the submission of his country to France.

Most of the boys at the school were rich, and they often ridiculed Napoleon and his country. And yet he bore them no ill-will; and, says Bourrienne, "when he had the supervision of any duty which they infringed, he would rather go to prison than denounce the criminals." During the winter of 1783-84, when the fall of snow was unusually heavy, Napoleon, then fourteen, suggested to his mates that they build a snow fort, "divide ourselves into sections, form a siege, and I will undertake to direct the attacks." This sham war was carried on with great enthusiasm for a fortnight.

Three of the best scholars were sent every year from each of the twelve provincial military schools of France to the Military College of Paris. Napoleon was one of the three sent from Brienne.

Here the young men lived so expensively that the youth of fifteen wrote a letter of protest to the Vice-Principal Berton of Brienne. He urged that, instead of so many attendants, and two-course dinners, they should wait upon themselves, clean their own boots, and eat the coarse bread made for soldiers. Temperance and activity would fit them, he said, for the hardships of war.

Napoleon won the admiration of his teachers. The professor in history, M. de l'Eguille, said: "A Corsican by birth and character, he will do something great if circumstances favor him."

After a year at this school, he was made second lieutenant of artillery in the regiment of La Fère, in 1785. The next five years he passed at different military stations in France. He was always studying. He pored over maps and plans of fortresses. He read with avidity books on law, philosophy, theology, political economy, and various forms of government. He wrote an essay on the question, "What are the institutions most likely to contribute to human happiness?" He also wrote a history of Corsica and her wrongs.

Abbott relates that on a day of public festivity at Marseilles, Napoleon was criticised because he did not join in the amusements. He replied, "It is not by playing and dancing that a _man_ is to be formed."

At Auxonne, Napoleon and some other officers boarded with a plain barber. The wife of the barber did not like the taciturn young Napoleon, who stayed in his room and devoured his books, while the other officers pleased her from their social ways, and enjoyment of the gossip of the town.

Years after, Napoleon, who had won several victories, passed that way. He asked the barber's wife if she remembered an officer by the name of Bonaparte in her home. "Indeed I do," was the reply, "and a very disagreeable inmate he was. He was always either shut up in his room, or, if he walked out, he never condescended to speak to any one."

"Ah, my good woman," said Napoleon, "had I passed my time as you wished to have me, I should not now have been in command of the army of Italy."

Napoleon was at this time very slight in physique, five feet six and a half inches tall, with a very large head, pale face, piercing eyes of grayish blue, brown hair, a smile that could be sweet and captivating, and beautiful hands.

In 1791, when he was twenty-two years old, Napoleon, now first lieutenant, visited Corsica on furlough. Remaining too long, his name was struck off the army lists. He returned to Paris, and anxiously looked about for some way to earn a living. He met his schoolmate, Bourrienne, who usually paid for any meal they took together at a restaurant, as, although poor, he was richer than Napoleon. Each day they had projects for earning money. They found some houses building, and desired to rent them, and then underlet them, but the owners asked too much to realize any profit. Napoleon solicited employment at the war office. "Everything failed," says Bourrienne.

Bonaparte's mother, left a widow with eight children in 1785, was, of course, powerless to help Napoleon. Her husband had gone on business to Montpellier in the south of France, and died of a cancerous ulcer in the stomach in the thirty-ninth year of his age. His wife was only thirty-five. Madame Bonaparte was possessed of wonderful energy, great strength of will, and excellent judgment. These her son Napoleon inherited in a marked degree.

She proved equal to the care of her fatherless children. "She managed everything," said Napoleon, "provided for everything with a prudence which could neither have been expected from her sex nor from her age. Ah, what a woman! Where shall we look for her equal? She watched over us with a solicitude unexampled. Every low sentiment, every ungenerous affection, was discouraged and discarded. She suffered nothing but that which was grand and elevated to take root in our youthful understandings. She abhorred falsehood, and would not tolerate the slightest act of disobedience. None of our faults were overlooked. Losses, privations, fatigue, had no effect upon her. She endured all, braved all. She had the energy of a man, combined with the gentleness and delicacy of a woman."

When Bonaparte was waiting in Paris for some position to open, the French Revolution had begun. On June 20, 1792, a ragged mob of five or six thousand men surrounded the Tuileries, put a red cap on the head of Louis XVI., and made him show himself at the windows to the crowd in the garden. Napoleon was indignant, and said to Bourrienne, "Why have they let in all that rabble? They should sweep off four or five hundred of them with the cannon; the rest would then set off fast enough."

Napoleon also witnessed the storming of the Tuileries on Aug. 10, when the Swiss guards were massacred. Although a Republican in sentiment, he had no sympathy with the extreme democracy of the Jacobins, and said: "If I were compelled to choose between the old monarchy and Jacobin misrule, I should infinitely prefer the former."

Years later, when Napoleon was Emperor, when asked to allow a person to return to France who had been prominent in the downfall of the Bourbon dynasty, he said, "Let him know that I am not powerful enough to protect the wretches who voted for the death of Louis XVI. from the contempt and indignation of the public."

Corsica and Paoli (who had returned and become her governor) were shocked at the excesses of the French Revolution, and hoped and planned once more for independence. Finding themselves unable to achieve it alone, they sought the aid of England. Bonaparte and his family favored adherence to France, and were banished from the island, their home plundered, and they made their escape at midnight to Marseilles. Here they were for some time in extreme poverty. Joseph, the eldest son, found employment as a clerk in an office, and in August, 1794, married Julia Clari, the daughter of one of the richest merchants of Marseilles. This was a great pecuniary benefit to the whole family.

Napoleon had finally been reinstated in the army; for with the Reign of Terror at home, and wars with monarchies abroad, all fearful of the growth of republican sentiments and consequent revolutions, the French army was in need of all its able young men.

Napoleon's first important work was at the siege of Toulon. This was the great naval depot and arsenal of France. The Royalists, or followers of the Bourbon king, Louis XVI., had centred here, and, opposed to the republic, had surrendered the city, with its forts and ships, to England.

The place must be retaken; and the Republic sent out an army under Carteaux, a portrait painter. For some months the siege was carried on, but almost nothing was accomplished. Sixty thousand men were needed, and Carteaux had but twenty-five thousand.

Napoleon, on his way from Avignon to Nice, passed through Toulon, stopping to see a friend who introduced him to Carteaux. The young officer saw at once the mistakes of the campaign. "Instead of attacking the town," said Napoleon, "try and establish batteries which shall sweep the harbor and the roadstead. If you can only drive away the ships, the troops will not remain."

Cape l'Eguillette separates the two harbors, and here batteries were placed to sweep the sea; for Napoleon had said, putting his finger on the map, at the cape, "Toulon is there!"

As he predicted, the English ships were driven off after a terrible bombardment; fifteen thousand of the inhabitants of Toulon in dismay fled to the ships of the allies; the plan of Napoleon had proved a great success.

He was not responsible for the horrors which followed. The Royalists set fire to the arsenal and ships before their departure; while the town was in flames, cannon from the shore sunk boat-loads of fugitives, and hundreds in the city who could not escape were deliberately shot in the streets and in their homes, so desperate had become the hate between Royalists and Republicans, or really Jacobins.

Fouché, afterwards prominent under the Empire, wrote to a friend, Dec. 23: "We have only one way of celebrating victory. This evening we shoot two hundred and thirteen rebels. Adieu, my friend; tears of joy run down my cheeks, and my heart is overflowing."

"It was," says Walter Scott, concerning this taking of Toulon, Dec. 17, 1793, "upon this night of terror, conflagration, tears, and blood, that the star of Napoleon first ascended the horizon; and, though it gleamed over many a scene of horror ere it set, it may be doubted whether its light was ever blended with that of one more dreadful."

For this brilliant undertaking Napoleon was made General of Artillery. General Dugommier, who commanded at Toulon, said, "Promote this young officer, or he will promote himself." Napoleon was wounded in his thigh by a bayonet thrust in one of the charges. He was at this time but twenty-four years of age, poor, ambitious, and with little prospect of his future wonderful career.

He was sent to defend the coast of Provence, and was denounced by the Jacobins, who said he was building a bastile at Marseilles to enslave the people. In March, 1794, he rejoined the army of Italy at Nice, and was so useful that the commander-in-chief wrote: "I am indebted to the comprehensive talents of General Bonaparte for the plans which have insured our victory."

In July, 1794, he was sent on a mission to Genoa, to examine the fortresses and the neighboring country. Meantime, one set of French leaders had been superseded by a set equally bad. Through jealousy, and as a friend of the younger Robespierre, Napoleon was arrested as a "suspected person," was two weeks in prison, and nearly lost his life. He seems to have been spared for the selfish reason, "the possible utility of the military and local knowledge of the said Bonaparte." He addressed an eloquent letter to his accusers, quoted by Lanfrey, in which he says: "Remove the oppression which surrounds me; give me back the esteem of patriots. An hour afterwards, if bad men wish for my life, I care so little for it, I have so often counted it for nothing.... Yes, nothing but the idea that it may be of use to the country gives me courage to bear its weight."

Soon after this, to scatter such officers as himself, who were supposed to be Jacobin in tendency, Napoleon was ordered to La Vendée to put down civil dissensions. He rebelled against being separated from the army of Italy. "You are too young," said Aubrey, the Girondist deputy, "to be commander-in-chief of artillery."

"Men age fast on a field of battle," said Napoleon, "and I am no exception."

For refusing to proceed to his post, Napoleon's name was struck off the army lists, and again he was in Paris, out of employment. When he and Bourrienne took a stroll at evening on the Boulevards, and saw the rich young men on horseback, apparently living a life of ease and luxury, "dandies with their whiskers," says Madame Junot (Duchess d'Abrantès), Napoleon would exclaim bitterly, "And it is on such beings as these that Fortune confers her favors. How contemptible is human nature!"

He told Count Montholon, when in exile at St. Helena, that at this time he came near committing suicide by throwing himself into the river. With head down, and meditating upon his determination, he ran against a plainly dressed man, who proved to be Démasis, a former comrade in the artillery.

"What is the matter?" he said to Napoleon. "You do not listen to me! You do not seem glad to see me! What misfortune threatens you? You look to me like a madman about to kill himself."

Napoleon told him his needs, and his mother's poverty. "Is that all?" said Démasis. "Here are six thousand dollars in gold, which I can spare without any inconvenience. Take them, and relieve your mother."

Hardly aware of what he was doing, Napoleon grasped the money, and sent it to his mother. Afterwards he could find nothing of Démasis. Fifteen years later, when the Empire was near its fall, Napoleon met him, made him accept sixty thousand dollars to repay the loan of six thousand, and appointed him director-general of the crown gardens, at a salary of six thousand dollars a year, and the honors of an officer in the household. He also provided a good situation for Démasis' brother.

He never forgot a kindness. A humble shoemaker, who worked for him in these days of poverty, and waited for his pay, was always employed by Napoleon after he became Emperor, though he was urged to go to some one more fashionable. A jeweller, who once trusted him, was remembered in Napoleon's days of prosperity, and thus made his fortune. To a lady, a stranger to him, who once was kind to him in sickness in these early years, he sent two thousand dollars, hearing that her circumstances had changed. To an old man in Jersey, who had once loaned his father twenty-five louis, he sent ten times that sum.

Reverses began to attend the army of Italy. Whenever it was convenient to use his services, it seemed always to be remembered that he had knowledge and sagacity. Napoleon was asked by the director of military affairs to draw up a plan of operations for the army. It was sent to Kellermann, commander-in-chief of the army of Italy, who rejected it, saving, "The author is a fit inmate for a lunatic asylum." Lanfrey and other historians consider the plan altogether brilliant and admirable.

Napoleon, by years of study, had made himself a master in the science of war, as well as along other lines. He had made himself ready for a great opportunity, and a great opportunity came to him.

France, in her struggle for self-government, had adopted a new constitution, under a Directory of five persons, with a Council of two hundred and fifty Ancients, and a Council of Five Hundred, somewhat like our House of Representatives. The new government, though acceptable to the provinces, did not please either the Royalists or Jacobins of Paris, and the people, now so used to bloodshed, resorted to force to destroy the Directory.