Excerpt from Joachim Murat: Marshal of France and King of Naples Joachim Murat was a younger son. The law of equal division of property was still in the future, and it was intended that his eldest brother Andre should inherit the inn of La Bastide and the little farm. The army, the navy, the civil service, were all careers in which there was a poor prospect for the son of a commoner, and still more for a country-bred commoner's son. The nobles and the wealthy townsfolk were the only people who could look for certain promotion and safely prosperous careers in the service of the State in any Of its branches. Probably this was why it was decided that Joachim should be educated for the Church. There the patronage of the Talleyrands would be useful to him. They were helpful from the outset. It was, thanks to their protection that, when he was ten years Old he was given a bourse or scholarship at the college of' Cahors, where he was to make his classical studies in prepara tion for the seminary. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.