Corsica, the Bonaparte family and the studies of the young Napoleon

I am going to tell you the lesser-known story of Napoleon. The story of the first chapter of his life, a chapter titled “Corsica” or in other words “From Place to Fortune – From Napoleon to Napoleon” and you could also say “To Eat or Be Eaten? That is the Question”.

The Scottish writer, biographer, and jurist, James Boswell, visits Corsica in 1765 and falls in love with the island and its people. In the essay he writes following this visit, he describes, among other things, the strong, intoxicating scent of the mixture of rosemary, thyme, lavender, and juniper, which blends with the scent of pine and wild olive trees. The scent is so strong, he writes, that it hits you while you are on board the ship before you drop anchor on the island.

During his visit, Boswell met with the Corsican leader, Pasquale Pauli, who in 1754, at the age of thirty, after fifteen years of exile from the island, most of which he spent as an officer in the service of the King of Naples, was chosen by the Corsicans to lead the rebellion against the foreign Genoese rule.

The rule of the Genoese was, in fact, effective only in the coastal cities, and Pauli established a constitutional regime based on universal principles. Thus was created the first and only republic in Europe, which won the admiration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and thanks to which the Corsican struggle against the foreign Genoese rule gained international sympathy.

Boswell describes Pauli as a tall, strong, well-built man, with a handsome and radiant face, masculine, and noble. A shrewd politician, an eloquent speaker, with personal charm, with a broad general education that radiated calm and clarity over his ideas, with impressive organizational ability that combined liberal principles with a tough Corsican tradition. The Corsicans admired him and called him Baboo (which in Corsican means “father”) and in their eyes he was a true mythological hero.

That strong, intoxicating smell accompanied by the screams of seagulls greeted seventeen-year-old Second Lieutenant Bonaparte as he stood on September 15, 1786, on the deck of the ship that brought him to his hometown of Ajaccio (Ajaccio in French), which he had left eight years earlier.

It was in December 1778 when nine-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte, known to his parents as Napolio, was taken by his father Carlo, along with his older brother, Giuseppe, and his half-uncle, his mother Letizia's half-brother, Giuseppe Pesce, who was six years older than Napolio, toFranceThere, Nabouliu spent five and a half years at a military boarding school in Briançon, a year at the officer school in Paris, and since then he has served as a junior officer in the “Le Père” artillery brigade, stationed in a town called “Valence” in southern France.

This is his first vacation since he left Corsica eight years earlier. In the meantime, his father, Carlo, had passed away eighteen months earlier, at the age of thirty-nine, leaving behind eight children who survived thirteen pregnancies by his wife, Letizia – five sons and three daughters. Naboglio is the second child.

On the platform, his relatives are waiting, his brothers, his sisters, some of whom he has never seen, his uncles, the family maid, Marina Sabrina, known as “Minana,” and also his wet nurse, Camilla Ilari. His mother, Letizia, has chosen to stay in her home, the Bonaparte family home. A two-story house, as it was then, located near the cathedral. Ajaccio – a shabby-looking city. Four thousand seven hundred inhabitants.

The group will make their way to Bonaparte's house through the narrow streets, streets where animals are slaughtered for food and their carcasses are hung on poles for display, and on hot summer days, the smell of the carcasses merges with the smell of the dead buried under the cathedral floor.

Nabolio is happy. He is going to meet his mother. Now he will have to revive the Corsican language that has rusted, and it will take months until the local Corsican dialect is spoken again in his mouth.

Corsica

Since ancient times, Corsica has been ruled by foreigners. First the Carthaginians, then the Romans, who in 430 were pushed out by the Vandals, who in turn were pushed out by the Byzantines, who gave their place on the island to the Lombards, and then the Moorish Muslim conqueror arrived.

The name Maori originates from the black Mauritanians, who converted to Islam and took over all of North Africa and parts of Spain. In Spain they were called Moro, and over the years this nickname became a nickname for Muslims in general among Europeans. The Muslims bequeathed to the Corsicans the blood feud, which is well known to us in our own regions, and the Corsicans refined and upgraded it to the well-known Vendetta.

Then the Pisans arrived and in 1284 Genoa took control of the island. It would rule it for four hundred years, except for one hundred and thirty years in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the island was ruled by the Kingdom of Aragon from Spain, except for six years in the sixteenth century when the island was ruled by France, and except for eight months in 1736 when the island was taken over by a German adventurer, a strange swindler, who, with the consent of the Corsicans, crowned himself king under the name “Theodore I” and quickly fled the island immediately after the Genoese placed a bounty on his head.

Although the Corsicans have their own unique language similar to Italian, and although Corsica has defined natural borders, it is difficult to speak of Corsican nationalism in those years because Corsican society was built on tribes, clans, clans, and families, and loyalty to the family (Esprit du clan) was paramount. The families were divided between the original inhabitants of the island, descendants of the Sea Peoples, and the families of immigrants who had arrived on the island over the generations, mainly from Italy.

The Buonaparte family

The Buonaparte family originated in Italy, and genealogists disagree about the exact origin of the family.

Some consider one Cesare Bonaparte, whose name appears in fifteenth-century Maiacchio inscriptions, to be the father of the Corsican Buonoparte family. On the other hand, some consider one of the combatants in the struggle that took place in Florence in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries between the Ghibellines and the Ghibellines to be the origin of the family, because the nickname of the combatants in those days was: “the good part” Buonoparte.

Others see one, Francesco Buonaparte from the city of Sarzana, in the La Spezia region of Italy, which in the sixteenth century was under the rule of the Kingdom of Genoa, as the origin of the Corsican Buonaparte family. And finally, some see Pisa as the origin of the family. In any case, when the emperor, Napoleon, later asked where his dynasty originated, he replied: “My dynasty began with me!”

Supposedly, because in reality he spends most of his time debauchery and is forced to flee back to Corsica after his money runs out and after a girl becomes pregnant. In Corsica he goes to study in Corte, the island's historic capital, located in Ibrox, where Pauli founded a university, and where the Free Corsican movement was born.

The Bonaparte family, not one of the most respected and powerful families on the island, but in the Ajaccio region it has quite a lot of influence. This influence was enough for Pauli, who needed the support of the families, to bring Carlo closer to him, and he would become his secretary.

The French takeover

January 1768 Genoa stampVersailles On an agreement in which it would hand over Corsica to France for 200,000 livres. Impoverished Genoa was in desperate need of money, and in order to preserve its honor, it was stipulated that after twenty years it would be allowed to receive Corsica back in return for the money. Even then it was clear that this would not happen and that Corsica had been sold for good.

Louis XV's France was a power and would not agree to share Corsica with Pauli's constitutional republic. Despite the determination of the Corsicans who resisted French occupation, with their poor military equipment and the lack of discipline of the militias, they were no real match for the well-trained and well-equipped French army.

On May 5, 1769, a French military force of about three thousand five hundred soldiers, commanded by General Noel Jordan, sixty-four-year-old Comte de Vaux, landed. Three days later, a battle took place on a bridge over the Golo River near a village called Ponte Nuovo.

The remnants of the Corsican camp retreat south through the mountain passes to the port city of Ponte Vechio, located in the southeast of the island. Pauli and about three hundred of his loyalists will board British ships that will take them to Italy. Carlo does not join them. He chooses to remain in Corsica – the excuse: he has a family.

The Buonaparte family and France

Corsica is ruled by a military regime that makes extensive use of the noose. Carlo realizes that the French have come to stay forever and decides to tie his fate with them. In the northern city of Bastia, the French military governor, Comte de Marbeuf, settles for him.

We do not know exactly when the relationship between Carlo and the governor began, but it is known that in July 1791 Carlo invited Marbeuf to Ajaccio to serve as godfather to the two-year-old Nabolio. It is said that Letizia, learning from experience, decided to postpone the baptism ceremony because she believed that the small and weak baby would not survive and she spared the expenses of the ceremony so that they would not go down the drain.

Marbeuf does not arrive. He sends another person in his place, but on August 15.08.1771, XNUMX, two months later, he arrives in Ajaccio, and attends the birthday celebration of two-year-old Napoleon. He meets Letizia. He likes her, and it seems that the attraction is mutual.

Other families choose to send their children to study in Italy. Not so Carlo. Carlo wants his children to study in France. But to do so he must be of noble descent. Carlo collects dubious documents to prove the noble origin of his ancestors, but without the help of Marbeuf and his intervention in Paris, all his efforts would have been in vain.

Napoleon's military education

Carlo also manages, with the help of Marbeuf, to obtain funding for his children's education at the expense of the French crown. Giuseppe is accepted into the seminary for priests in Autun, Naboulieu is accepted into the military boarding school in Brienne. Later, Sister Maria Anna (known as Eliza) will be accepted into the prestigious school for girls in Saint Cyr founded by Madame de Maintenon, the second wife of King Louis XIV. The third brother Luciano (known as Lucien) will also be sent after Naboulieu to Brienne.

Military boarding school in Bryan

The Brienne Military School is one of twelve military schools scattered throughout France. The curriculum is uniform and dictated from above. The Brienne school has 110 students, sons of nobles, fifty of whom are called “students of the king” – sons of impoverished nobles who cannot finance their children’s education from their own pockets.

Nabolio is one of them. The school is run by monks from a small order called the Minime who specialize in teaching. The order is so small that teachers for mathematics, languages, drawing and dance have to be imported from outside.

Students begin school at the age of eight or nine. The schooling lasts six years, and during this period, everyone, without exception, is forbidden to take any vacations. The hair on the head is shaved until the age of twelve, after which it is allowed to grow long, gather it, and tie it back in a ponytail. Students learn to manage on their own without the help of a servant.

The students sleep in two elongated halls, each divided into fifty to sixty small cells measuring about two square meters, and in each cell: a camp bed, a water jug, a bowl, a straw mattress, and only one blanket, even on cold winter days, and it is very cold in Brian in the winter.

Punishments are imposed, but not physical punishments. Punishments in the form of prohibitions on games, prohibitions on eating with others. Among other things, history is studied with an emphasis on world heroes under the motto: “History for a young person is a school of morality and noble qualities.”

The agenda is divided into two-hour blocks:

From 06:00 to 08:00 – Bathing, prayer, reading books dealing with good customs or laws
The state, breakfast mass.
From 08:00 to 10:00 – Mathematics, Latin, History, Geography, Physics.
From 10:00 to 12:00 – Drawing, fortifications and maps.
From 12:00 to 14:00 – lunch, rest.
From 14:00 PM to 16:00 PM – Latin, geography, history, physics, mathematics.
From 16:00 PM to 18:00 PM – Weapons, writing.
From 18:00 PM to 20:00 PM – music, dancing.
From 20:00 PM to 22:00 PM – Dinner, rest, prayer, and bed.

The goal was to create tough, educated, and decent people. The school is completely equal. Origin makes no difference, but Nabouliu is insulted by students for his lack of command of the French language and his strange Corsican customs.

When he is alone, he cultivates a small garden and, alongside it, he cultivates grand dreams. He refuses to bow down, literally. One day, when one of the monks seeks to punish him and orders him to kneel before him, Nabulio refuses, convulses all over his body and vomits. But in war games, he is a leader and he also convinces other students to act in protest, such as throwing their mattresses out of windows.

It is said that as consul, Bonaparte sought to foster this version of his days at the school in Brienne and he did not censor an article published by one of his former classmates in 1802 in which he is described as a person:

“Cold, solitary, rarely speaks, gives monosyllabic answers,” writes this former student. “He participated in games with us. He preferred to be alone and read serious and useful books. We called him the Spartan.”

There is an objective source – a report from the 1781 inspector of military schools, Chevalier de Keralio, who writes:
"Excellent health, disciplined in his expression, gentle, direct and thoughtful, most satisfactory behavior."

The following year, in 1782, his parents came to visit him for the first time. Letizia was shocked by his thinness. Nabolov was interested in joining the navy, whose performance in the American War of Independence had made him highly sought after (like the pilot in our country), but fate destined him for the artillery, because those who excelled in mathematics were directed to this corps, especially since promotion in this military branch stemmed mainly from talent and not from origin, which attracted candidates of relatively inferior origin.

On October 17.10.1784, XNUMX, after five years and four months at the boarding school in Briançon, Nabouliou, along with four other students, were taken, accompanied by a monk, to the officer school in Paris.

Officers' School in Paris

Paris, which Nabolov arrives in, is a city that is still largely in the Middle Ages. There is no sewage system, no sidewalks. Nabolov is locked up in the officers' school and is cut off from the outside world, and on the few occasions when he is allowed to go out, it is with an escort.

Conditions at the officers' school are much better than those at the boarding school in Brienne. The staff outnumber the students, Nabouli has his own room, and meals are served on porcelain.

The students, aged thirteen to fifteen, have a very busy schedule. They wake up at 05:30 a.m. and there is very little free time between lessons and exercises. Nabolio works hard and takes out his frustrations in fistfights with noblemen. Most of the time he is sullen and resentful of the students' ostentatious lifestyle.

His heart is set on Corsica and he is immersed in the history of the island and especially in the struggle of his hero, whom he admires most, Pasquale Pauli. He writes to his father and asks him to send him Boswell's book (Account of Corsica), of course translated into French, which presents Pauli as a freedom fighter. He tells his friend, Lougier de Belcour, about a dream he had in which Corsica appeared in the form of a woman who held out to him an old, rusty dagger and said: "You will avenge me."

Napoleon's enthusiasm for Pauli did not go unnoticed by the students. In an atlas from the days when they studied geography at Briançon, which has miraculously survived to this day, one of the students drew a cartoon showing Napoleon walking while one of the teachers tried to stop him by pulling his horse's tail. Below it is written: "Bonaparte vole au secours de Pauli pour le tenir des main de ses enemis" (Bonaparte runs, flying, to Pauli's aid to save him from his enemies).

In the same year, 1785, his father Carlo dies. Giuseppe stops his studies and returns to Ajaccio to help his mother. Nabologno, realizing that he must also finish his studies quickly, finishes them in a year instead of two and ranks forty-second out of fifty-eight students who graduate with him, but Nabologno is the only one to do so in a year instead of two. On September 1785, XNUMX, Nabologno is commissioned as an officer with the rank of second lieutenant, and is the first Corsican to graduate from the officer school in France.

Second Lieutenant Napoleon in Valence

Napoleon is stationed in Valence, five thousand inhabitants, in the artillery brigade La Fere, one of the finest in the French artillery. He rents a simple room – a bed, a table and a chair – in an inn on the corner of Croissant and Grand Rue. When he has a penny in his pocket he dines at the Chez Grey restaurant in the Hotel de Trois Pigeons on Rue Perolerie. At that time his passion for reading reaches its peak, especially in history books.

In his diary he will write:

According to army regulations, he must serve in his unit for at least a year before being granted leave.

What will happen on the first vacation and the vacations that follow, and how will it affect Napoleon's future and the future of France? You can read about this in the next article that will be published soon.