Adam Zamoyski - Napoleon - The Man Behind the Myth

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