NAPOLEON I. (1769-1821), emperor of the French. Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio on Aug. 15, 1769, the year following the reunion of Corsica with France. His father, Charles Buonaparte—it was not until after 1796 that the spelling Bonaparte was adopted—came of a good family which had been established in the island since the 16th century. The family origins may perhaps be traced to Tuscany, an Italian province, the relations of which with Corsica had always been close. Na poleon himself, in later years, scoffed at the exaggerated tales invented by flatterers and courtiers, of the lordly status formerly held by the family at Treviso and Bologna. Yet his father was undoubtedly of noble birth, and was the delegate of the Corsican nobility at Paris. Charles Buonaparte married Laetitia Ramolino, a woman of strong character and great personal beauty. He was a lawyer by profession and brought up a large family in difficult times. After the Corsicans had, several times, revolted against their Genoe-se masters, the republic of Genoa, despairing of ever bringing the rebels to submission, ceded its rights to France, against which the Corsicans, led by Paoli (q.v.) at first attempted resistance. Charles Buonaparte joined Paoli's party. He even joined him in his campaign, taking with him his wife and children, lest they should be seized as hostages by the French. When Paoli was beaten and had to fly Charles Buonaparte became reconciled to French rule and benefited by the protection of M. de Marbeuf, the governor, to whom he was able to make himself useful. In 1779, sent on a mission to Versailles, he took with him his second son, Napoleon, for whom M. de Marbeuf had obtained a bursary at the military academy at Brienne.
These facts enable us to understand the character of Na poleon. He was born a Frenchman, of a family which, unwilling at first to become French, afterwards unreservedly accepted the fait accompli. From the age of ten he was educated with other boys of his own class by French people according to French ideas. Though we must make due allowance for heredity, family influence, and the impressions of early childhood, it is an exaggeration to explain Napoleon, as historians since Stendhal have been too much inclined to do, entirely in the light of his Corsican and Tuscan origin, and to see in him the incarnation of a condottiere, or of a 14th century Italian city despot, a modern Castruccio Castracani. It is more important to bear in mind that
young Bonaparte, born in an island which had only just become part of France, shared neither the traditions nor the prejudices of his new country.
In 1789, at the age of 20, he came into the Revolution with an open mind, feeling neither like nor dislike for many things which other Frenchmen either regretted or frankly detested. If he remained Corsican in temperament he was, by virtue of the in struction he had received, and the books he had read, pre eminently a man of the 18th century. His occasional early philo sophical writings leave no doubt as to this side of his character, which is also illustrated by the life-long habit of epigrammatic, well-turned, often paradoxical expression, a trait which he had in common with Chamfort and Rivarol; witness his celebrated definition of love as "une sottise faite a deux." Further, having lost his father in 1785, and having been designated by him as the head of the family, although he was the second and Joseph the eldest son, he had known poverty and the responsibility of helping to provide for his mother, brothers and sisters. Success was more necessary to him than to others, and the upheaval of 1789 favoured the ambitious.
We must realize therefore that he entered the Revolution in rather an unusual frame of mind, occasionally ardent, joining the Jacobins without hesitation, but also capable of coolly judging events as when on June 20, at the capture of the Tuileries, he was moved to scorn by the weakness of Louis XVI. We must also remember that, having begun his studies at the cadet school at Brienne, he completed them at the Ecole Militaire in Paris, where (1784-5) he received a solid grounding in the work of an artilleryman and an officer. It would be wrong to look on him as a kind of self-taught genius, a god of war, who might be said to have discovered, taught, and even created strategy and tactics.