he emerged from his mother's womb a born warrior because she gave
birth to him immediately after a hazardous 'flight in the heather' -
retreating through the maquis with Corsican forces after being defeated by
the French. And the French writer Chateaubriand, who knew Napoleon
well and worked for him as a diplomat, argued that the true date of his
birth was 5 February I768; according to this theory, it was Napoleon's
brother Joseph who was born on IS August I769 and Napoleon was the
eldest son.
The sober facts are less sensational. On 2 June I764 Carlo Buonaparte
of Ajaccio, an eighteen-year-old law student, married the fourteen-year
old Marie-Letizia Ramolino, also of Ajaccio. Both families were
descended from Italian mercenaries in Genoese pay who settled in
Corsica at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The Buonapartes came
originally from Tuscany and could trace their lineage to the soldier of
fortune Ugo Buonaparte, documented as a henchman of the Duke of
Swabia in I I22. Ugo was a veteran of the struggle between Guelphs and
Ghibellines and a devoted supporter of the Holy Roman Emperor in his
conflict with the Pope. The loser in a Florentine power struggle, Ugo
spent his last days in the seaport of Sarzana, and it was from there in the
early sixteenth century that his descendant Francesco Buonaparte
emigrated to Corsica.
Such at any rate was the Buonaparte family tradition; their surname
was said to denote Ugo's Imperialist affiliations. The earliest unimpeach
able record shows a member of the Buonaparte family, a lawyer, as a
member of the Council of Ancients in Ajaccio in I6I6; several more
Buonaparte lawyers served on this council in the eighteenth century. The
Buonapartes like the Ramolinos were part of the Corsican nobility, but it
must be remembered that Corsican 'nobles' were as common as 'princes'
in Czarist Russia. Carlo Buonaparte, born on 27 March I746, had been
studying law at Pisa University but left to marry Letizia without taking
his degree. The romancers have seized on this fact to build up a coup de
foudre love affair between Carlo and Letizia, but the match was certainly
dynastic, even though some sections of the Ramolino clan objected to the
marnage.
The Ramolinos were a cadet branch of the distinguished Collalto
family, well entrenched in Lombardy since the fourteenth century; the
Ramolinos themselves had been established in Corsica for 250 years.
Where the Buonapartes were a family of lawyers, with the Ramolinos the
tradition was military: Letizia's father was an army officer with expertise
in civil engineering, who commanded the Ajaccio garrison and held the
sinecure office of Inspector-General of Roads and Bridges. Both the
marcin
(Marcin)
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