“When she came to see me at Brienne she was frightened at my thinness. I was indeed much changed, because I employed the hours of recreation in working, and often passed the nights in thinking about the days’ lessons. My nature could not bear the idea of not being first in my class.” After finishing at this academy, Napoleon went to the military college at Paris. Father Bonaparte’s death, about this time, left the family poorer than ever. Sometimes Napoleon did not have enough to eat. But that did not prevent him from studying hard. His great ambition kept him from starving. Some time after his graduation he was assigned to a small command in Paris. “Red” revolutionists were trying to destroy the city. Young Napoleon thought it high time to stop them. A mob gathered in a public square threatening to kill people and burn their houses. He opened fire on the mob and cleared that square in short order. It was said afterward, “Bonaparte stopped the French Revolution with a whiff of grapeshot!” From being “the Man of the Hour” Napoleon went on until he became “the Man of Destiny.” He was raised to the highest rank, and as General Bonaparte became commander-in-chief of the French army in Italy, where he gained brilliant victories over the Austrians. But the Austrians would not stay beaten, and while Napoleon was away in Egypt, Austria started in to win back its control of northern Italy. When Napoleon returned to Paris he was the idol of the people. They elected him consul, a kind of president, of the French republic. The Austrians were pleased at this, as it would keep “the Little Corporal,” as the soldiers called Napoleon, in Paris. He would have to send another commander to Italy, and the Austrians had gotten such a start that they could win the victory before the French forces could go around the Alps. Austria was already crowing over its triumph and all Europe was laughing because General Bonaparte had been “caught napping,” when one May morning Consul Napoleon and a great army came tobogganing down the mountain sides into the plains of Italy, as if they had fallen from the sky. In a letter to his older brother, Napoleon wrote of this: “We have dropped here like a thunderbolt; the enemy didn’t expect it, and hardly believe it yet.” He had made his soldiers climb up the Alps Mountains in the highest, steepest place, dragging heavy cannon and army supplies after them. By his wonderful feat of crossing the Alps, Napoleon won by surprise the victory at Marengo, just as he had beaten the shepherd lads when he was a boy of eight.