Birth of Napoleon in Ajaccio

Genoa ceded Corsica to France by the Treaty of Versailles of 15 May 1768. Pasquale Paoli, who had governed the independent island for fourteen years, was beaten at Ponte-Novu on 9 May 1769 and crossed to England. Napoleon was born three months later, on 15 August 1769: he was French by a narrow margin, and his mother had followed the partisans into the maquis while pregnant.

Carlo Buonaparte, a lawyer trained at Pisa, had been one of Paoli's secretaries before siding with the French governor Marbeuf. That change of allegiance earned the family, in 1771, recognition of its nobility by the Superior Council of Corsica — without which none of his sons could have entered one of the king's military schools.

The birth took place in the family house at Ajaccio, today a national museum. Tradition holds that Letizia Ramolino, seized by labour on her way back from the Assumption mass, gave birth on a couch in the drawing room. The child was given the name of a great-uncle, Napoleone, and was baptised only on 21 July 1771, at nearly two years old, in Ajaccio cathedral.

He was the second surviving son, after Joseph, born in 1768; Lucien, Élisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline and Jérôme would follow. The family belonged to a minor island nobility more honourable than rich: the fortune was to come from the father, who spent his life in lawsuits and petitions.

Elected deputy of the Corsican nobility to the island's estates, Carlo obtained royal scholarships for his two eldest sons. On 15 December 1778 he left Ajaccio with Joseph and Napoleon; the boys entered the college of Autun on 1 January 1779, where the younger learned French in three months.

In May 1779 Napoleon entered the military school of Brienne, a king's scholar among the sons of wealthier gentlemen. He would not see Corsica again before 1786 and never returned there for good: the island he left at nine remained, until Saint Helena, a homeland of memory rather than of residence.