In the late Middle Ages the Republic of Genoa established bases at the anchorages of Bastia on the north-eastern coast and Ajaccio in the south-west to protect its shipping lanes and deny their use to others. It garrisoned these with soldiers, mostly impoverished nobles from the Italian mainland, and gradually extended its rule inland. But the mountainous interior held little economic interest, and although they penetrated it in order to put down insurgencies and exact what contributions they could, the Genoese found it impossible to control its feral denizens and largely left it alone, not even bothering to map it.
The indigenous population preserved its traditional ways, subsisting on a diet of chestnuts (from which even the local bread was made), cheese, onions, fruit and the occasional piece of goat or pork, washed down with local wine. They dressed in homespun brown cloth and spoke their own Italian patois. They were in constant conflict over issues such as grazing rights with the inhabitants of the port towns. These considered themselves superior and married amongst themselves or found spouses on the Italian mainland, yet with time they could not help being absorbed by the interior and its ways.
It was a pre-feudal society. The majority owned at least a scrap of land, and while a few families aspired to nobility, the differentials of wealth were narrow. Even the poorest families had a sense of pride, of their dignity and of the worth of their ‘house’. It was also a fundamentally pagan society, with Christianity spread thinly, if tenaciously, over a stew of ancient myths and atavisms. A profound belief in destiny overrode the Christian vision of salvation.
As there was hardly any coinage in circulation, most of the necessities of life were bartered. The result was a complicated web of favours granted and expected, of rights established or revindicated, agreements, often unspoken, and a plethora of litigation. Any violent move could provoke a vendetta from which it was almost impossible to escape, as nothing could be kept secret for long in such a restricted space. Shortage of land meant that ownership was divided and subdivided, traded and encumbered with complicated clauses governing rights of reversal. It was also the principal motive for marriage. And so it was for General Bonaparte’s father, Carlo Maria Buonaparte.
When his son came to power, genealogists, sycophants and fortune-hunters set about tracing his ancestry and came up with various pedigrees, linking him to Roman emperors, Guelf kings and even the Man in the Iron Mask. The only indisputable facts concerning his ancestry are that he was descended from a Gabriele Buonaparte who in the sixteenth century owned the grandest mansion in Ajaccio, consisting of two rooms and a kitchen over a shop and a store room, and a small garden with a mulberry tree.
Where Gabriele came from remains uncertain. The most convincing filiation is to minor gentry of the same name from the little town of Sarzana on the borders of Tuscany and Liguria, some of whom took service with the Genoese and were sent to Corsica. Recent DNA tests have shown that the Corsican Buonaparte belonged to the population group E, which is found mainly in North Africa, Sicily and particularly the Levant. This does not rule out a Ligurian connection, since people from those areas washed up over the ages on the coasts of Italy as well as those of Corsica.1
Gabriele’s son Geronimo had been notable enough to be sent as Ajaccio’s deputy to Genoa in 1572, and acquired, by marriage, a house in Ajaccio as well as a lease on some low-lying ground outside the town known as the Salines. His descendants also married well, within the circle of Ajaccio notables, but the need to provide dowries for daughters split up the family’s property, and Sebastiano Buonaparte, born in 1683, was reduced to marrying a girl from the upland village of Bocognano, apparently for the two small plots of land in the hills and the ninety sheep she brought him in her dowry. She bore him five children: one girl, Paola Maria, and four boys: Giuseppe Maria, Napoleone, Sebastiano and Luciano.
The family home had been partitioned by dowries, and the seven of them were crammed into the forty square metres that remained theirs. The building was so dilapidated that a military billeting commission classified it as unfit for any but lower ranks. Thus, although they were still considered among the anziani, the elders or notables of Ajaccio, the family’s lifestyle was anything but noble. A smallholding provided vegetables and their vineyards wine for their own needs and some extra to sell or exchange for oil and flour, while their flocks produced occasional meat for their own consumption and a little income.
Luciano was the most intelligent of the brood, and joined the priesthood. He bought out other family members and installed an indoor staircase in the house. His nephew, Giuseppe’s son Carlo Maria, born in 1746, also set about rebuilding the family fortunes, and it is his social ambitions that were to have such a profound effect on European history.2
History had begun to take an interest in Corsica. The corrupt inefficiency of Genoese rule had sparked off a rebellion on the island in 1729. It was put down by troops, but simmered on in the interior. In 1735 three ‘Generals of the Corsican nation’ convoked an assembly, the consulta, at Corte in the uplands and proclaimed independence, attracting the sympathies of many across Europe. One of the dominant themes in the literature of the Enlightenment was that of the noble savage, and Corsica seemed to fit the ideal of a society unspoilt by the supposedly corrupted Christian culture of Europe. In 1736 a German baron, Theodor von Neuhoff, landed in Corsica with weapons and aid for the rebels. He proclaimed himself King of the Corsicans and set about developing the island according to current ideals. Genoa called on France for military assistance, the rebels were obliged to flee, and Theodor settled in London, where he died, a declared bankrupt, in 1756. His vision did not die with him.3
In 1755 Pasquale Paoli, the son of one of the three ‘Generals of the Corsican nation’, had returned from exile in Naples and proclaimed a Corsican Republic. Born in 1725, Paoli had been eleven years old when Theodor expounded to him his vision for the island, and it had haunted him throughout his exile. Styling himself General of the Nation, over the next thirteen years he worked at building an ideal modern state endowed with a constitution, institutions and a university. His charisma ensured him the love of the majority of the Corsicans, who served him devotedly, referring to him as their Babbo, their father. He gained the admiration of enlightened European opinion, with Voltaire and Rousseau in the lead. The British traveller James Boswell visited him in 1765 and wrote up his experiences in what turned into a best-seller, further enhancing his reputation.4
While Paoli ruled the Corsican Nation from the Lilliputian hill-town of Corte at the heart of the island, coastal towns remained in the hands of the Genoese, who had twice called in French military assistance to maintain their grip. The French at first confined themselves to holding the port cities and surrounding areas, but it was unlikely that France would countenance the existence of a utopian republic on its doorstep for long, and wise Corsicans hedged their bets.
On 2 June 1764, a year after the death of his father, the eighteen-year-old Carlo Buonaparte married Letizia Ramolino, who was just under fifteen years of age. She was by all accounts a beauty, but that was not the motive for the match, which had been arranged by Carlo’s uncle Luciano. The Ramolino family, descended from a Lombard nobleman who had come to Corsica a couple of hundred years earlier, were of higher social standing than the Buonaparte. They were also better-connected and richer. Letizia’s dowry, which consisted of a house in Ajaccio and some rooms in another, a vineyard and about a dozen hectares of land, enhanced Carlo’s position. The marriage did not take place in church since the essence of any Corsican marital union was property, the principal element was the contract, and it was customary to sign this in the house of one of the parties, after which the newlyweds might or might not have their marriage blessed by a priest.5
Soon after their wedding, the couple moved to Corte, where Carlo’s uncle Napoleone had already joined Pasquale Paoli. Their first child was stillborn, their second, a daughter born in 1767, died in infancy. On 7 January 1768 they had a son, baptised Joseph Nabullion. Carlo enrolled
at the university and eventually published a dissertation on natural rights which reveals a degree of education.6
Paoli resided in a massive structure made of the same dark-grey rock as all the other houses and the paving of the streets in Corte. He imported furniture and textiles from Italy in order to create within this grim building a few rooms in which a head of government could receive. Good-looking and amiable, the young Joseph quickly won his friendship. Letizia was by Corte standards a sophisticated and well-dressed lady, and her beauty and strong personality meant that along with her sister Geltruda Paravicini she was a welcome member of Paoli’s entourage.
Paoli admitted to Boswell that he placed great trust in Providence. That, and the praise being directed at him from various parts of Europe, had lulled him into a state of complacency. He believed that the British, who had taken an interest in supporting the Corsican cause before, and were now in thrall to Boswell’s An Account of Corsica, would come to his aid if he were threatened. By the same token France could not countenance the possibility of the strategically important island falling into the hands of a hostile power. Still smarting from overseas losses to Britain during the recently ended Seven Years’ War, French wounded pride would welcome the balsam of a colonial gain. Genoa had given up on Corsica, and owed France a great deal of money. By the Treaty of Versailles of May 1768 it ceded the island to France, pending the repayment of the overdue debt. French troops moved out of their coastal bases to impose the authority of King Louis XV.7
Paoli issued a call to arms, but his was a lost cause, though the men of the uplands put up a stiff resistance, inflicting heavy casualties on the French. Carlo was at Paoli’s side during the decisive engagement at Ponte-Novo on 8 May 1769, but did not take part in the fighting; Paoli hovered some three kilometres away as his men were routed by a superior French force under the comte de Vaux. Paoli fled over the mountains to Porto Vecchio, whence two British frigates took him and a handful of supporters off to exile in England.8
Carlo Buonaparte was not among them. Family legend has it that Paoli insisted he stay behind in Corsica, but it is more likely that Carlo made the decision himself. The island had never entirely submitted to any regime, and among its inhabitants family came a long way before loyalty to any cause. While Carlo and his uncle Napoleone had served Paoli, his other uncle Luciano had remained in French-held Ajaccio, where he had sworn fealty to the King of France, as had most of the notables of the coastal cities. Unperturbed by the cause of independence, Letizia was writing to her grandfather Giuseppe Maria Pietrasanta in French-held Bastia asking him to send her bales of Lyon silk and new dresses fit for a noblewoman.9
‘I was a good patriot and a Paolist in my heart as long as the national government lasted,’ Carlo wrote. ‘But this government has ceased to exist. We have become French. Eviva il Re e suo governo.’ Having submitted to Vaux, he went back to Ajaccio. On the way home over the mountains, Carlo almost lost his wife and the child she was carrying in her womb when her mule stumbled in the torrent of the river Liamone.10
The child was born on the night of 15 August 1769, and named after his great-uncle Napoleone, who had died two years before. The name did not figure in the liturgical calendar as belonging to a saint, but it was not unknown in Genoa and Corsica, where it was sometimes spelt Nabullione or even Lapullione, and had been given to several members of the family in the past. He would not be christened until July 1771, by which time his father had repositioned himself with considerable skill.11
Since the legal profession was the key to obtaining civic office under any government, Carlo set off for Pisa to obtain the necessary qualifications. ‘One can have no idea of the facility with which the title of doctor is granted here,’ wrote a contemporary French traveller of the university of Pisa. ‘Everyone in the locality is one, even the inn-keepers and post-masters.’ Carlo presented a hastily-written thesis for which he obtained a doctorate, and within six weeks he was back in Ajaccio, where he found no shortage of work.12
With a population of 3,907 according to the French census of 1770, Ajaccio was the second largest city in Corsica, but it was in essence a sleepy, smelly village. When Balzac visited it more than half a century later he was stunned by the ‘unbelievable indolence’ pervading the place, with the menfolk wandering about all day smoking. It consisted of a minuscule citadel stuck out on the promontory shielding the port, and behind it a walled town not more than 250 metres across in any direction, clustered around three radiating streets intersected by another three narrower ones, with an attractive promenade and square between the two named the Olmo after a large elm that grew on it. Within the walls there was a cathedral whose roof fell in in 1771 and would not be repaired for twenty years, and which was unusable in summer due to the stink emanating from the dead buried under its floor. There was also a Jesuit college and a governor’s residence, tucked into an assortment of mean-looking townhouses ranged along narrow streets bordered by small shops whose trade spilled out onto them. The smell of fish drifting over from the harbour mingled with that of the hides put out to dry by the butchers cutting up carcases in the street and the stench from the moat of the citadel. Outside the city walls stood a convent, a hospital, a military barracks and a seminary, and, along the road leading up to the town from the north, an agglomeration of dwellings known as the Borgo, where the poorer inhabitants lived.13
The city was dominated by families such as the Ponte, Pozzo di Borgo, Bacciochi and the Peraldi, and an oligarchy of notaries, lawyers and clerics with ‘noble’ connections such as the Buonaparte. This society was supplemented by the magistrates, judge, officers and other officials of the French administration. The houses within the city walls were mostly divided by multiple ownership like the Buonaparte home, and, since all their inhabitants were related to each other by blood or marriage, the whole area was a familial congeries connected by tangled ties. Ajaccio’s lawyers, Carlo among them, thrived on the squabbles generated by the resulting disputes over restricted space and scant resources. Carlo himself would be engaged for many years in a legal battle over some used wine-making equipment and a few leaky barrels. In one case, he pleaded for a client over one kerchief. There was plenty of work, but it was not remunerative enough or commensurate with Carlo’s ambitions. On the basis of his doctorate, in 1771 he obtained a minor post at the court of Ajaccio, but he was aiming higher.14
He had wasted no time in seeking the favour of the French military governor of the south-west of the island, the comte de Narbonne. On being fobbed off, he offered his services to Narbonne’s superior in Bastia. Charles Louis, comte de Marbeuf, needed a party of supporters among the notables of Ajaccio, and the Buonaparte were ideally placed to provide it. Their collaboration developed so well that Carlo felt bold enough to invite Marbeuf to stand godparent at the christening of his son Napoleone on 21 July 1771, and Marbeuf agreed. In the event Marbeuf was prevented from attending, so he sent a Genoese patrician and later royal lieutenant at Ajaccio, Lorenzo Giubega, to act as proxy. Marbeuf did come to Ajaccio less than a month later for the festivities of the feast of the Assumption and the little Napoleone’s second birthday on 15 August. He was so struck by the beauty of the child’s mother that he insisted she take his arm on the afternoon passegiata up and down the Olmo, and after walking her home he stayed there until one in the morning. Carlo’s ambitions soared.15
France was interested in Corsica both for its strategic importance and for its economic potential. It was accorded the status of a semi-autonomous province within the kingdom, and the French authorities set about organising it. A survey revealed to them the idiosyncratic nature of Corsican society, with its broad base of land tenure and plethora of hunting, gathering and fishing rights and obligations. These would hinder rationalisation, while the egalitarianism that had so enchanted Boswell and Rousseau impeded not only progress but the establishment of a hierarchy necessary for successful political control. One of the first actions of the new French regime was to correct this by recogn
ising as noble the most prominent families. In large measure thanks to the usefulness of Carlo and the charms of his wife, the Buonaparte were included. ‘Ajaccio is struck with astonishment and filled with jealousy by the news,’ Carlo wrote to his wife’s grandfather.16
The connection with Marbeuf was invaluable. In 1772 Carlo was elected to represent Ajaccio in the newly established Assembly of Corsican Estates only because Marbeuf intervened to have his successful rival’s election annulled. The governor’s direct intercession also helped resolve a lengthy court battle between the Buonaparte and their Ornano cousins over a dowry that included a significant part of the house in which they lived. By way of a series of buy-outs, swaps and court cases Carlo would extend his possession over the years against a backdrop of running battles between the various members of the family involving the use of the staircase and other areas where interests clashed. These occasionally flared into violence, and inevitably ended up in court, where the knowledge that Carlo had the backing of Marbeuf counted.17
The rise of Carlo’s fortunes and the governor’s interest in Letizia aroused jealousy and gave rise to gossip. Marbeuf, a widower, did have an official mistress in Bastia, a Madame Varese, but whatever charms she may have possessed, at fifty she was past her prime, while Letizia was still young. It is difficult to see any reason other than an amorous one for him to spend time with an uneducated woman forty years his junior, and he gave every sign of being besotted by Letizia. There is no evidence that the relationship was sexual, but it was widely believed that it was, and that her son Louis, born in 1778, was his.18
Letizia would bear a total of thirteen children, of whom three died young and two in childbirth. The first surviving child was Joseph, born in 1768, the next Napoleone, born in 1769. As his mother was unable to feed him, he was provided with a wet-nurse, Camilla Carbon Ilari, who grew so fond of him that she neglected her own son. Napoleone and his elder brother, christened Joseph but known as Giuseppe, were also spoiled by their father and their grandmother Saveria Paravicini, known in the family as Minanna. But they were kept under strict control by Letizia. Strong, brave and characterful, Letizia was endowed with common sense. Unlike the rest of her family she was pious, and hardly went out other than to church. She was also a strict disciplinarian, administering slaps to all her children, and once giving Napoleone a thrashing which he remembered to the end of his life. She exerted a strong influence on him, and he would later say that he owed everything to her.19
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