Descendant of a Piedmontese family established in Levens for two centuries, André Masséna, a Sardinian subject with fragile health, was born in Nice on May 6, 1758. His father, Julius-César Masséna, after having served in the troops of the King of Sardinia and married the daughter of a Toulon shipowner, runs a prosperous grocery store there. Taken away by tuberculosis, he dies in 1764, at the age of thirty-three, leaving six young children that his widow immediately abandons in order to remarry. The humiliated Masséna family welcomes and shares this host of orphaned children without enthusiasm. André, who is only six years old, is entrusted to his maternal grandmother who lives in the house of Levens.
A turbulent child, Masséna, who does not go to school, is out all day. As he has to carry out an activity, he is finally placed as an apprentice with parents bakers, still in Levens. After two years, sickened by the monotony of these repetitive tasks, he returns to Nice to work with an uncle who runs a pasta factory. Undergoing the nefarious influence of a delinquent cousin, he occupies his moments of freedom to frequent the local underworld and almost turns bad.
At thirteen, he escapes from Nice with his cousin to seek his fortune in France. Another relative welcomes him and takes him as an apprentice sailor aboard the merchant vessel he commands. In contact with a fierce crew, the puny Masséna learns to live in a community, hardens his body and forges a strong character.
After four years spent roaming the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, he is definitely done with the sea and, back in Toulon, does not renew his contract. He is seventeen years old, can neither read nor write, and is penniless. Following the advice of another uncle, who was a recruiting sergeant in the Royal-Italien regiment of Toulon where his own father had served, he enlists with relief on August 18, 1775.
In this new environment, Masséna, who finds attentive teachers, makes up for lost time by working diligently. His uncle guides him in the career and instills in him basic notions which will be invaluable to him. Settled down, courageous at work, he is a corporal after a year, then becomes a sergeant on April 18, 1777. While continuing to learn, he vegetates in this position until 1783, when he becomes a sergeant-fourrier before being appointed adjutant in September 1784.
Favored by a pleasant physique, crowned with the prestige of the uniform, Masséna multiplies female conquests. Lean, slim, with a sharp gaze, an emaciated face framed by large sideburns, disheveled curly hair, he is an energetic man who imposes himself by the speed of his thinking and his decisions. Sparse in words, offensive in his remarks, he readily takes the pose, arrogantly staring at his interlocutors from the height of his meter seventy-two.
Jean-Claude Banc, Dictionnaire des Maréchaux de Napoléon, Pygmalion, P. 233-234.
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