on the day of birth to carry out a perfunctory baptism, but sober history
must be content to record that the formal baptism did not take place until
21 July 1771, when it was performed in Ajaccio cathedral by Napoleon's
great-uncle Lucien; the records show Lorenzo Giubeca of Calvi,
procureur du roi, as the child's godfather. The little boy was christened
Napoleone. It was an odd name, and its origin, predictably, is shrouded
in controversy. Some claimed it was a name deriving from the Greek and
meaning 'lion of the desert'. More plausibly, a Greek saint who suffered
martyrdom in Alexandria under Diocletian is cited, but the most likely
explanation is the simple and banal one that one of Letizia's uncles, a
Paolista who had recently died, bore that name.
There is little hard evidence for the events of Napoleon's early
boyhood. There is a strong tradition that he was sent in 1773 to a school
for girls run by nuns and that he was the terror of the playground. The
story goes that, when the children were taken for their afternoon walk,
Napoleon liked to hold hands with a girl called Giacominetta. Noting also
that Napoleon was sloppy with his appearance and often had his socks
around his ankles, some juvenile wag composed the couplet:
Napoleone di mezza calzetta
Fa l'amore a Giacominetta.If this provocative line was uttered, the sequel would have been
predictable, which was doubtless where the boy Napoleon got his early
reputation for fisticuffs.
It is certain that at about the age of seven he was sent to a Jesuit school,
where he learned to read and write, to do sums and take in the rudiments
of Latin and ancient history. But stories of tantrums and of a
systematically destructive boy who pulled the stuffing out of chairs,
wrecked plants and deliberately cut grooves in tables were later accretions
bruited about by his enemies and are fairly obvious attempts to read back
into his childhood authenticated adult traits.
Three items of anecdotal evidence relating to these early years seem to
be genuinely grounded in fact, not least because Letizia and Joseph
vouched for them in old age. Letizia recalled that when she gave her
children paints to use on the wall of their playroom, all the other children
painted puppets but Napoleon alone painted soldiers. Joseph recalled that
at school, when they played Romans and Carthaginians, Napoleon was
chosen by the teacher to be a Carthaginian while Joseph was a Roman.
Wanting to be on the winning side, Napoleon nagged and wheedled at the
teacher until the roles were reversed and he could play the Roman. This