Sicily from 1830 to 1861, Francesco Guardione’s Il Dominio dei
Borboni in Sicilia (Turin, 1908) will be found useful. The best
account of Garibaldi’s expedition is G. Trevelyan’s Garibaldi and the Thousand (London, 1909). (L. V.*)
NAPOLEON I. (1769–1821), Emperor of the French. Napoleon
Bonaparte (or Buonaparte, as he almost always spelt the name
down the year 1796) was born at Ajaccio in Corsica on the
15th of August 1769. The date of his birth has been disputed,
and certain curious facts have been cited in proof of the assertion
that he was born on the 7th of January 1768, and that his brother
Joseph, who passed as the eldest surviving son, was in reality
his junior. Recent research has, however, explained how it came
about that a son born on the earlier date received the name
Nabulione (Napoleon). The father, Carlo Maria da Buonaparte
(Charles Marie de Bonaparte), had resolved to call his three first
sons by the names given by his great-grandfather to his sons,
namely Joseph, Napoleon and Lucien. This was done; but on
the death of the eldest (Joseph) the child first baptized Nabulion
received the name Joseph; while the third son (the second
surviving son) was called Napoleon. The baptismal register of
Ajaccio leaves no doubt as to the date of his birth as given above.
For his parents and family see Bonaparte. The father’s
literary tastes, general inquisitiveness, and powers of intrigue
reappeared in Napoleon, who, however, derived from his mother
Letizia (a descendant of the Ramolino and Pietra Santa families)
the force of will, the power of forming a quick decision and of
maintaining it against all odds, which made him so terrible an
opponent both in war and in diplomacy. The sterner strain in
the mother’s nature may be traced to intermarriage with the
families of the wild interior of Corsica, where the vendetta was
the unwritten but omnipotent law of the land. The Bonapartes,
on the other hand, had long concerned themselves with legal
affairs at Ajaccio or in the coast towns of the island. They
traced their descent to ancestors who had achieved distinction
in the political life of medieval Florence and Sarzana; Francesco
Buonaparte of Sarzana migrated to Corsica early in the 16th
century. What is equally noteworthy, as explaining the
characteristics of Napoleon, is that his descent was on both
sides distinctly patrician. He once remarked that the house of
Bonaparte dated from the coup d’état of Brumaire (November
1799); but it is certain the de Buonapartes had received the
title of nobility from the senate of the republic of Genoa which,
during the 18th century, claimed to exercise sovereignty over
Corsica.
It was in the midst of the strifes resulting from those claims that Napoleon Bonaparte saw the light in 1769. His compatriots had already freed themselves from the yoke of Genoa, thanks to Pasquale Paoli; but in 1764 that republic appealed to Louis XV. of France for aid, and in 1768 a bargain was struck by which the French government succeeded to the nearly bankrupt sovereignty of Genoa. In the campaigns of 1768–69 the French gradually overcame the fierce resistance of the islanders; and Paoli, after sustaining a defeat at Ponte-Novo (9th of May 1769), fled to the mainland, and ultimately to England. Napoleon’s father at first sided with Paoli, but after the disaster of Ponte-Novo he went over to the conquerors, and thereafter solicited places for himself and for his sons with a skill and persistence which led to a close union between the Bonapartes and France. From the French governor of Corsica, the comte de Marbeuf, he procured many favours, among them being the nomination of the young Napoleon to the military school at Brienne in the east of France.
Already the boy had avowed his resolve to be a soldier. In the large playroom of the house at Ajaccio, while the others amused themselves with ordinary games, Napoleon delighted most in beating a drum and wielding a sword. His elder brother, Joseph, a mild and dreamy boy, had to give way before him; and it was a perception of this difference of temperament which decided the father to send Joseph into the church and Napoleon into the army. Seeing that the younger boy was almost entirely ignorant of French, he took him with Joseph to the college at Autun at the close of the year 1778. After spending four months at Autun, Napoleon entered the school at Brienne in May 1779. The pupils at Brienne, far from receiving a military education, were grounded in ordinary subjects, and in no very efficient manner, by brethren of the order, or society, of Minims. The moral tone of the school was low; and Napoleon afterwards spoke with contempt of the training of the “monks” and the manner of life of the scholars. Perhaps his impressions were too gloomy; his whole enthusiasm had been for the Corsicans, who still maintained an unequal struggle against the French; he deeply resented his father’s espousal of the French cause; and dislike of the conquerors of his native island made him morose and solitary. Apart from decided signs of proficiency in mathematics, he showed no special ability. Languages he disliked, but he spent much of his spare time in reading history, especially Plutarch. The firmness of character which he displayed caused him to be recommended in 1782 for the navy by one of the inspectors of the school; but a new inspector, who was appointed in 1783, frustrated this plan. In October 1784 Bonaparte and three other Briennois were authorized, by a letter signed by Louis XVI., to proceed as gentlemen cadets to the military school at Paris. There the education was more thorough, and the discipline stricter, than at Brienne. Napoleon applied himself with more zest to his studies, in the hope of speedily qualifying himself for the artillery. In this he succeeded. As the result of an examination conducted in September 1785 by Laplace, Bonaparte was included among those who entered the army without going through an intermediate stage.
At the end of October 1785 he closed a scholastic career which had been creditable but not brilliant. He now entered the artillery regiment, La Fère, quartered at Valence, and went through all the duties imposed on privates, and thereafter those of a corporal and a sergeant. Not until January 1786 did he actually serve as junior lieutenant. A time of furlough in Corsica from September 1786 to September 1787 served to strengthen his affection for his mother, and for the island which he still hoped to free from the French yoke. The father having died of cancer at Montpellier in 1785, Napoleon felt added responsibilities, which he zealously discharged. In order to push forward a claim which Letizia urged on the French government, he proceeded to Paris in September 1787, and toyed for a time with the pleasures of the Palais Royal, but failed to make good the family claim. After gaining a further extension of leave of absence from his regiment he returned to Ajaccio and spent six months more in the midst of family and political, affairs. Rejoining his regiment, then in the garrison at Auxonne, after a furlough of twenty-one months, the young officer went through a time of much privation, brightened only by the study of history and cognate subjects. Many of the notes and essays written by him at Auxonne bear witness to his indomitable resolve to master all the details of his profession and the chief facts relating to peoples who had struggled successfully to achieve their liberation. Enthusiasm for Corsica was a leading motive prompting him to this prolonged exertion. His notes on English history (down to the time of the revolution of 1688) were especially detailed. Of Cromwell he wrote: “Courageous, clever, deceitful, dissimulating, his early principles of lofty republicanism yielded to the devouring flames of his ambition; and, having tasted the sweets of power, he aspired to the pleasure of reigning alone.” At Auxonne, as previously at Valence, Napoleon commanded a small detachment of troops sent to put down disturbances in neighbouring towns, and carried out his orders unflinchingly. To this period belongs his first crude literary effort, a polemic against a Genevese pastor who had criticized Rousseau.
In the latter part of his stay at Auxonne (June 1788–September 1789) occurred the first events of the Revolution which was destined to mould anew his ideas and his career. But his preoccupation about Corsica, the privations to which he and his family were then exposed, and his bad health, left him little energy to expend on purely French affairs. He read much of the pamphlet literature then flooding the country, but he still preferred the more general studies in history and literature, Plutarch, Caesar, Corneille, Voltaire and Rousseau being his favourite authors. The plea of the last named on behalf of Corsica served
