Napoleon Bonaparte was not fond of dogs, until later in his life.
There is no record of Napoleon having a dog as a child or during his early military career. The first mention of a dog in his life comes when he married Josephine in 1796. The dog's name was Fortune. He belonged to Josephine and was very much pampered by her. Napoleon was not happy about this, especially when he had to choose between sleeping on their bed with the dog or sleeping somewhere else. "Do you see that gentleman?" said Napoleon to a friend while pointing to the dog. "He is my rival. He was in possession of Madam's bed when I married her. I wished to remove him but it was quite useless to think of it. I was told that I must either sleep elsewhere or consent to share my bed. That annoyed me considerably, but I had to make up my mind. I gave way. The favorite was less accommodating." The general was particularly unhappy when the dog would attack him when he and his wife were passionately "in flagrante delicto". "I bear proofs on my legs of what I say," Napoleon said to his friend.
A few years later, when the British boarded the warship Cleopatra after the ship surrendered, a Newfoundland dog was the first to reach the deck. According to reports, Napoleon slammed his hand down on the table and muttered "Dogs! Must I be defeated by them on the battlefield as well as in the bedroom?"
One day, the feisty Fortune picked a fight with the cook's Mastiff and the result was fatal for the Pug. Josephine was quite distraught over losing her beloved dog, and was soon given another Pug by Lieutenant Hippolyte Charles who was part of the household guard and also one of Josephine's lovers. One morning, the cook apologized to the general for his dog's actions and informed him that he was keeping his dog locked up. Napoleon's response was "Let him out. Perhaps he can rid me of this new one as well."
In 1815, when pulling away from the island Elba, Napoleon slipped and fell overboard. He was not a good swimmer and the weight of his full dressed uniform and large iron sword strapped to him made staying afloat difficult. The general was floundering in the water when a Newfoundland dog belonging to a fisherman came to his rescue. Napoleon was able to hang on to the dog until the sailors were able to turn around and rescue him.
A few months later, the night after the Battle of Bassano, Napoleon walked across the battlefield covered with corpses. According to his memoirs:
"We were alone, in the deep solitude of a beautiful moonlit night. Suddenly a dog leaped out from under the cloak of a corpse. He came running toward us and then, almost immediately afterward ran back to his dead master, howling piteously. He licked the soldier's unfeeling face, then ran back to us — repeating this several times. He was seeking both help and revenge. I don't know whether it was the mood of the moment, or the place, or the time, or the action in itself, or what — at any rate, it's a fact that nothing I saw on any other battlefield ever produced a like impression on me. I stopped involuntarily to contemplate this spectacle. This man, I said to myself, has friends, perhaps. He may have some at the camp, in his company — and here he lies, abandoned by all except his dog. What a lesson nature was teaching us through an animal.
"What a strange thing is man! How mysterious are the workings of his sensibility! I had commanded in battles that were to decide the fate of a whole army, and had felt no emotion. I had watched the execution of manoeuvres that were bound to cost the lives of many among us, and my eyes had remained dry. And suddenly I was shaken, turned inside out, by a dog howling in pain!"
Before Napoleon's death in 1821, he owned a black and white dog of unknown breed named Sambo. It is said he would walk the dog often and had a real fondness for him.
