ars old he was taken by his father to a military school in France.

For five years Napoleon remained at this school at Brienne mastering
the military art. As he was gloomy and silent and did not make friends
easily, he was the butt of ridicule and bore ill natured jokes from the
other young students there, but in spite of this, all were a little
afraid of him and did not dare to provoke him too far.

When Napoleon was sixteen years old, his military education was
considered to be finished and he was given the commission of a second
lieutenant in an artillery regiment. In all these years he had only
seen his father once. But Charles Buonaparte either had realized the
greatness of his own son, or had one of those flashes of prophesy that
sometimes come to dying men, for on his deathbed he cried out, asking
for the son, Napoleon, whose sword, he said, was to shake the earth and
who was to make himself the master of all Europe.

It was not many years after the young officer had joined his regiment
that he had a chance to distinguish himself. This was at the siege of a
town called Toulon. All France was in upheaval at that time, for the
people had revolted against their rulers and had overthrown their king
and their nobility. Their king, Louis the Sixteenth perished on the
public scaffold under the knife of the guillotine, and the French
revolutionists had carried on such a reign of terror that all Europe
was in turmoil and the hand of almost every other nation in the world
was against the French. Even a number of the French themselves were
opposed to their own government and had placed the town of Toulon at
the disposal of the English and their allies.

It was this town that the French army was endeavoring to take, and a
long and unsuccessful siege had been carried on, for Toulon was
strongly defended. Until Napoleon Buonaparte came, the French
accomplished little. But Napoleon soon changed the look of the siege.
Young as he was he had command of all the artillery that was being used
against the town, and his military genius soon made itself felt, for he
gave his orders with lightning rapidity and saw that they were carried
out with a skill that amazed the other officers. Due to his efforts and
the skilful arrangement of the cannon at his disposal, the most
important strong points of the town fell into French hands, the British
fleet, which was cooperating with the besieged, was driven off, and
Toulon was captured.

Bu