1769.]

DATE OF HIS BIRTH.

3

many triumphs in the field, and almost rooted out the last remnant of the power of Genoa. But at the end of the year 1764 France sent over six French battalions, under the command of the Count de Marbœuf, an able, amiable, and experienced veteran, who was destined to exercise a great influence over the fortunes of the Bonaparte family. In 1768, nearly four years after the arrival of the Count de Marbœuf, the Republic of Genoa, finding that she could do nothing with the island herself, made a formal sale of Corsica to the Crown of France. For a short time the war of independence lingered on in the interior; but then Paoli was compelled to abandon his native country, and to seek an asylum in England.

It was during the last heavings of this tempest that Napoleon saw the light. He was born at Ajaccio, on the 15th of August, 1769.

An old dispute as to the date of his birth has been recently revived and discussed with great and unnecessary heat. The register of Napoleon's first marriage with Josephine Beauharnais, preserved in the mairie of the second arrondissement or quarter of Paris, where he was married in 1796, fixes the date of his birth on the 5th of February, 1768; and many persons, relying on this document, still maintain that this is the exact date. Yet, many years ago, M. Eckard, a painstaking Swiss, and a writer of some eminence, who very carefully examined the question, was convinced by an extract from the Registres de l'Etat Civil of Ajaccio, which was copied for him on the spot, that Napoleon was really born in that city on the 15th of August, 1769. A short time before his own death, M. Eckard gave his proofs in a short essay entitled, "Bonaparte est-il né Français ?" (Was Bonaparte born a French subject?) Bourrienne, who had known Napoleon from the age of nine years, was decidedly of opinion that he was born on the 15th of August, 1769, a few months after the union of Corsica with France. M. Michaud, jun., who contributed a very full, and, on the whole, very good memoir of the great man to the" Biographie Universelle," found this date confirmed by the register of Napoleon's military services, preserved in the archives of the War Office at Paris; and writing with these documents before him, he could not doubt that the true date was August 15th, 1769, the day which Napoleon, when

he had attained to greatness, caused to be kept as his birthday. But how shall we account for the date indisputably inserted in the marriage register? Josephine was his senior by several years. Was it out of a feeling of gallantry towards her that he then made himself more than eighteen months older than he really was? Yet, at that period, when he had his fortune to make, and indeed afterwards, when his fortune was more than made, one must think he would have had a strong and evident motive for proving that he was by birth a subject of France-by law a Frenchman. But whatever may have induced this extraordinary man to anticipate his birth at the time of his wedding, there seems no longer any reason to doubt that his anniversary is now celebrated on the right day.

The Bonaparte family was of the class styled “famiglie di cittadini," or notables of Corsica, a sort of native gentry,—for the Genoese did not recognize in Corsica any nobles or patricians except those who were inscribed in the Golden Book at Genoa. The ancestors of Napoleon appear to have emigrated from Genoa to Ajaccio about the end of the fifteenth century. Another family, or distant branch of the same family, bearing the name of Buonaparte, was already settled in the town of San Miniato, in Tuscany, and since that period it has produced several men of learning. A Niccolo Buonaparte, in the sixteenth century, published a comedy, entitled, "La Vedova," or "The Widow." There was also a Jacopo Buonaparte, the reputed author of a narrative of the storming and pillage of Rome by the imperial troops in 1527; but his title to the authorship of the work has been disputed. One Ranieri Buonaparte was professor in the University of Pisa, in Tuscany, in the early part of the eighteenth century.* These few facts seem to comprise all that is really known of the race.

But other accounts speak of the Buonapartes as a distinguished family as early as the twelfth century, and describe them as having taken part in those factions and wars of the Guelphs and Ghibel

* André Vieusseux, "Napoleon Bonaparte, his Sayings and his Deeds,"-an admirable compendium, written by one thoroughly well versed in Italian history, and in the history of the whole of continental Europe, from the year 1790, and the outbreak of the great French Revolution,

PARENTS OF NAPOLEON.

5

lines which so long devastated Italy. According to these relations, which we do not pretend to deny, although they are unsupported by any existing or accessible evidence, they were Ghibellines, like Dante, and, like that immortal poet, were persecuted and exiled from Tuscany by the victorious Guelphs. They were afterwards settled at Bologna, Sarzana, Treviso, and other places, where their armorial bearings, sculptured in stone, were to be seen in the façade of houses. For a long time Napoleon is said to have prided himself not a little on the advantages of gentle birth and the antiquity of his family; and if at a later period he affected to despise such matters, his sincerity may be doubted, as, at the same time, he gave a friendly reception to genealogists who traced his descent from the most ancient House of Brunswick, to the Greek emperors of the House of Comnenus, and even to Attila the Hun! In his first Italian campaigns he received as friends the magistrates of Treviso, who hastened to assure him that his noble ancestors had once governed their Republic; but fifteen years after this, when his fatherin-law, the Emperor of Austria, paid him a similar compliment, he replied that his patent of nobility dated from the battle of Monte Notte (the first victory which he gained over the Austrians), and that he preferred being the founder, the Rudolph of Hapsburg, of his dynasty.

His father, Charles Bonaparte, exercised the profession of a lawyer at Ajaccio, as the fortunes of the family had declined. He had previously studied in the University of Pisa. It is frequently said that Charles had there taken the degree of Doctor of Civil Law; but the short time he stayed at Pisa, and his very early marriage, seem to cast some doubt on this assertion. He was a remarkably handsome man, and said to be very eloquent, as Corsicans very frequently are. He was the bosom friend, and, according to some, a relative of Pascal de Paoli. When scarcely nineteen years old he married Letitia Ramolini, who had not completed her sixteenth year, and who was celebrated in Corsica as the most beautiful young woman of her day. The family of Ramolini, said to be descended from an ancient noble house of Naples, appears to have been in about the same condition and circumstances as that of Bonaparte. Both in

disputably belonged to the gentry of the island, and would have been classed among the nobility in almost any parts of Italy. The proud Genoese, with their Golden Book and their exclusions, incensed families of this class, and made in Corsica insurgents and patriots of many who otherwise would have lived quietly under their government. When Paoli, who had often beaten the Genoese, attempted to oppose the power of the French, who had purchased the island, Carlo Bonaparte took the field with him, and although he was scarcely more than twenty years old, he acted as Paoli's aidede-camp and secretary. His young wife, who had already been delivered of her son Joseph, and who was then pregnant with Napoleon, accompanied her husband, sharing in the hardships and dangers of a partisan warfare, over the rugged mountains of that difficult island, until the defeat of the Corsicans at Ponte Novo obliged Paoli to give up the unequal contest, and to emigrate to England. It has been remarked that some physiologists ascribe to these circumstances the restless disposition of Napoleon for war; he is reported to have said himself that he never felt so happy and so well as during a campaign, when riding sixty miles in a day, and that his health generally declined in peace and repose.*

In the latter years of his own life, Napoleon was heard to regret the defection of his father. "Paoli,” said he, “was a great man : he ought to have followed his fortunes, and to have fallen with him!" He, however, was not consistent in the views he took of this case. For us, it is curious to remark that, if Carlo Bonaparte had accompanied Paoli in his flight, his son Napoleon would have received an English education, and would have become, in all probability, an officer in our army, like the late Count Rivarola, and many others of his Corsican countrymen. Nay, it might even have happened that the birth of Napoleon should have occurred in England. But, upon the final submission of Corsica to France, about the middle of June, 1769, Carlo Bonaparte, making terms with Count Marbœuf, retired to his native town, and about two months after, Napoleon, his second child, was born there. In his baptismal register at

A. Vieusseux. Bourrienne.

1778-1783.] MILITARY SCHOOL AT BRIENNE.

7

Ajaccio, his family name is spelt both Buonaparte and Bonaparte; the former being more in accordance with the correct or Tuscan orthography, but the second agreeing better with the common pronunciation of most Italians, who, in speaking, say Bono, instead of Buono. His father, and other members of his family, signed Buonaparte; but Napoleon himself, from the date of his first Italian campaigns, adopted the signature of Bonaparte, probably because it was shorter and better adapted to French pronunciation: he became known to the world as Bonaparte, and his own spelling, as registered in his own despatches, proclamations, and other documents, ought now to be universally adopted.*

Carlo Bonaparte had two uncles: Napoleon, who was a magistrate, and died at Corte, in Corsica, in Paoli's time; and Luciano, who was a priest and Archdeacon of Ajaccio. Both these members of the family appear to have been much respected by their countrymen. Carlo Bonaparte transferred to Count Marbœuf the devotion he had previously professed to Paoli, and the Count became the friend and protector of the lawyer and his wife and children. When in the year 1770 the Count, as Governor of Corsica, convoked the three Estates of that island, the family of Bonaparte was registered in the order of the nobility, and Carlo, as its representative, attended the Assembly. Shortly afterwards he was appointed Counsellor and King's Assessor to the Judicial Court, for the city and province of Ajaccio. In 1777, after the accession of the amiable and well-intentioned Louis XVI., Carlo, with other deputies of the nobility of Corsica, was sent to Paris and the Court of Versailles. While in the French capital, through the patronage of Count Marbœuf, Carlo obtained a bourse, or gratuitous admission, to the College of Autun for his eldest son Joseph; and another in the Military School of Brienne for Napoleon. He afterwards obtained, through the same recommendation, a pensioner's place for his eldest daughter Marianne in the Royal Institution of St. Louis de St. Cyr. Three children

* A. Vieusseux. Napoleon's amiable brother Louis, late King of Holland, &c., was very angry with Sir Walter Scott for spelling the name in the true Italian manner with the ætter 24. The text will explain what very little reason there was for such anger.