A reconnoitre of the field of action is the first duty of a
successful commander; and hence it was that Napoleon, not wishing to
rush wholly unprepared into the battle of life, assigned to his
brother Joseph the arduous task of first entering into the world to
see how the land lay. Joseph having found everything to his
satisfaction, Napoleon made his appearance in the little island of
Corsica, recently come under French domination the 15th day August,
1769. Had he been born two months earlier, we are told, he would
have been an Italian. Had he been born a hundred years later, it is
difficult to say what he would have been. As it was, he was born a
Frenchman. It is not pleasant to contemplate what the man's future
would have been had he been born an Italian, nor is it easy to
picture that future with any confidence born of certainty. Since the
days of Caesar, Italy had not produced any great military commander,
and it is not likely that the powers would have changed their scheme,
confirmed by sixteen centuries of observance, in Napoleon's behalf--a
fact which Napoleon himself realized, for he often said in his latter
days, with a shudder: "I hate to think how inglorious I should have
become had I been born two months earlier and entered the world as an
Italian.
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