Back the day Napoleon, from Corsica, actually whantedbto join the British Army before he settled to become an Artillery Officer in the French Army. The rest is, quite literally, history.
Do you have a citation for that? My understanding is he went to boarding school in France at the age of 9 and then directly entered the French military academy. The hero of his youth, Pasquale Paoli, was in exile in England for much of that time and so maybe he wanted to join him until the revolution happened and Napoleon no longer supported Corsican independence.
