He kept a civil tongue to his mother, but
Letizia had the air and manners of a great lady and after the
fashion of Italian mothers, she knew how to rule her brood of
children and command their respect. For a few years he was
fond of Josephine, his pretty Creole wife, who was the daughter
of a French officer of Martinique and the widow of the
Vicomte de Beauharnais, who had been executed by Robespierre
when he lost a battle against the Prussians. But
the Emperor divorced her when she failed to give him a son
and heir and married the daughter of the Austrian Emperor,
because it seemed good policy.
During the siege of Toulon, where he gained great fame
as commander of a battery, Napoleon studied Macchiavelli
with industrious care. He followed the advice of the Florentine
statesman and never kept his word when it was to his
advantage to break it. The word ``gratitude'' did not occur in
his personal dictionary. Neither, to be quite fair, did he expect
it from others. He was totally indifferent to human suffering.
He executed prisoners of war (in Egypt in 1798) who had
been promised their lives, and he quietly allowed his wounded
in Syria to be chloroformed when he found it impossible to
transport them to his ships. He ordered the Duke of Enghien
to be condemned to death by a prejudiced court-martial and to
be shot contrary to all law on the sole ground that the
``Bourbons needed a warning.
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