Revival: The Women Bonapartes vol. I (1908)

The Mother and Three Sisters of Napoleon I

Hugh Noel Williams

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351342360
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: World History

It will therefore, I think be admitted that the present volumes, in which I have endeavoured to give a full and unprejudiced history of the Women Bonapartes, call for no apology; and I may even venture to believe that, whatever their shortcomings, they will be welcomed by the English and American public as an attempt to fill a place in our Napoleonic literature which has been long vacant.

THE

WOMEN BONAPARTES

CHAPTER I

Letizia Ramolino—History of the Bonapartes of Corsica—Carlo Bonaparte—His marriage with Letizia Ramolino—Birth of Joseph Bonaparte —Letizia and the confessor at Bastia —Enthusiasm of Carlo Bonaparte for Paoli and the cause of Corsican independence—Cession of the island to France—The Bonapartes at Corte—Outbreak of the war between the Corsican patriots and France—Courage of Letizia, who follows her husband throughout the war—Adventures of the Bonapartes after the battle of Ponte-Nuovo —Carlo Bonaparte makes his submission to France.

AT the beginning of the fifth decade of the eighteenth century, there was living at Ajaccio, in Corsica, a young man named Gian Geronimo Ramolino. He came of a family of Lombard origin, branches of which had settled at Florence, Naples, and Genoa, and it was from the last-named city that his ancestors had emigrated to Corsica, towards the end of the fifteenth century. Since the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, in 1559, the island had belonged to Genoa, and Gian Ramolino obtained a commission in the army of that republic. He proved himself an excellent officer, and the ability he displayed as an engineer impressed his superiors so favourably that, in May 1750, he received the post of inspector-general of roads and bridges in Corsica.

Four years earlier, on February 2, 1745,¹ the young soldier had taken unto himself a wife, one Angela Maria Pietra - Santa, a member of an old Corsican family, originally of Sartine, near Ajaccio. Of this marriage, three children were born : two girls and a boy. The elder daughter died in infancy, and of the son little or nothing seems to be known; but the younger daughter, Maria Letizia, the date of whose birth was long a matter of dispute, but is now generally given as 1750,² was destined to achieve immortality as the mother of the greatest military genius that the world has seen.

In 1755, when his little daughter was five years old, Gian Ramolino died, and, five years later, his widow married Franz Fesch, a member of a Swiss family and a captain of Genoese marines, who had abjured Protestantism in order to obtain her hand. The children of this marriage were a girl, who became the wife of a compatriot of her father named Bürkly, and a boy, Joseph, celebrated in after years as Cardinal Fesch.

In the South, girls mature early; at thirteen, Letizia Ramolino seems to have been, by common consent, one of the most beautiful maidens in Corsica; and her mother and stepfather had already begun to look about them for a suitable husband. She had a wealth of sunny chestnut hair, dark eyes, a well-formed, though rather long nose, a beautiful mouth and pretty white teeth, small and exquisitely modelled ears, hands and feet, and a slightly prominent chin, which indicated firmness of character. Her figure, though somewhat below middle height, was perfect and her carriage easy and graceful. Altogether, a most alluring damsel.

The young lady’s education had been sadly neglected; but what of that? One did not cultivate blue-stockings in Corsica. She could read and write; she knew a little—a very little—Latin; that was all. Of any modern tongue but her own, of music or of art, her ignorance was profound. For the rest, she was devout, at least outwardly, as were all Corsican women, though not extravagantly so; a little superstitious, believing in the power of the evil eye, fairies, and so forth, and a good—that is to say, a submissive—daughter.

A suitor for the hand of the fair Letizia was not long in presenting himself. About the year 1490,¹ an Italian mercenary named Francesco di Bonaparte² had come to the recently founded Genose colony of Ajaccio, not in the quality of “captain-commandant of the Genoese troops,” as several genealogists have stated, but as a simple cross-bowman of the town-guard. This Francesco di Bonaparte was a descendant of a family which came, like the Ramolini, from Lombardy, whence they removed to Tuscany, and branches of them subsequently settled at San Miniato, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, and Sarzana. Francesco himself belonged to the Sarzana branch, and his father Giovanni di Bonaparte had been syndic of that town.

Francesco, who is styled in official documents “the Moor of Sarzana” or “Francesco Bonaparte, called the Moor,” either on account of an unusually swarthy complexion, or because he had served under Ludovico the Moor, Duke of Milan, resolved to settle in Corsica, and obtained a grant of land on the confines of the Genoese colony of Saulo della Pieve, in the district of San Giovanni. Some years before migrating to Corsica, he had married a certain Caterina di Castelletto, the daughter of an official of the Bank of San Giorgio, who bore him two children, a daughter, Antonia, and a son, Gabriele. This Gabriele was the ancestor in the ninth degree of Napoleon Bonaparte.

During the sixteenth century, most of the Corsican Bonapartes of whom any record remains seem to have been soldiers. Gabriele followed his father’s profession in his youth, though in his later years he entered the priesthood, and in 1582, when it is calculated he must have reached the patriarchal age of ninety-seven years, became arch-priest and canon of Ajaccio. We read also of an Antonio Bonaparte, likewise in the Genoese service, who was killed in an encounter with the Corsicans, who, having tied his dead body on his horse, with the head towards the crupper, drove the animal back to Ajaccio; of an Anzio Bonaparte, who, in 1560, was despatched on an expedition to Cauro in pursuit of some banditti; and of one Luca Bonaparte, a natural son of Francesco’s younger brother, Cesare, a corporal of the garrison of Ajaccio, concerning whom a tragic anecdote is related.

In 1572, a certain Antonio Ornano quarrelled with and struck Luca in the street at Ajaccio. The latter laid his hand on his sword, but the companions of Ornano threw themselves upon him, and he was compelled to stomach the affront. Time passed, and the episode had been forgotten, when, one fine morning, Ornano was found mortally wounded on the threshold of his house, with his right hand pinned to the door-post by a poniard. From subsequent inquiries, there appears to have been little doubt that his assassin was the man whom he had insulted several years before.

After the close of the sixteenth century, the history of the Bonapartes of Corsica seems to have been, on the whole, very uneventful. In that land of unrest, in the midst of a turbulent and quarrelsome population, at a time when it was computed that two-thirds of the male inhabitants perished by violent deaths, they lived a tranquil and peaceful existence, giving offence to none whom it was dangerous to offend, making prudent marriages,¹ educating their children with a care which showed that they had inherited, to some extent, the cultured taste of their Italian ancestors, and labouring incessantly for the increase of their patrimonies. They farmed their lands, traded in wine and oil, followed the professions of advocate or notary, and filled various public offices in Ajaccio. Prudent and peaceable, they took no active part in any political movement, but they frequently rendered good service to their adopted country; and we find one Agostino Bonaparte, grandson of Francesco, erecting, at his own expense, a watch-tower on the coast near Ajaccio, to give warning of the approach of the dreaded Barbary corsairs. This tower long preserved the name of the “Tower of Bonaparte.”

In 1763, the head of the family was one Carlo Maria Bonaparte, a strikingly handsome youth of eighteen,² of courtly manners and quite unusual culture, with “a pretty taste for verse-making.”¹ His father, Giuseppe Maria Bonaparte, had died some years before,² since which event the boy had been brought up by an uncle, Luciano Bonaparte, who had entered the priesthood and was at this time archdeacon of Ajaccio. After studying for a year or two at the so-called University of Corte, Carlo was sent to complete his education at the University of Pisa, where he eventually obtained the degree of Doctor of Laws. While at Pisa, he made the acquaintance of a well-to-do family named Alberti. The eldest daughter was pretty, and, it was understood, likely to receive a considerable dot. The young Corsican fell in love with the girl, or the prospective dowry, or both, and proposed for her hand. But Signor Alberti, having caused inquiries to be made in regard to Carlo’s prospects, which were somewhat uncertain (since Giuseppe Bonaparte had left to his brother the entire control of the family property, and during his uncle’s lifetime the youth would only have what the archdeacon chose to allow him), and into his manner of life, which seems to have been decidedly extravagant, came to the conclusion that his daughter might do very much better for herself elsewhere, and refused his consent to the match.

While Carlo was still smarting under this blow to his self-esteem, for he always entertained a most exalted opinion of his own merits, he received a letter from Uncle Luciano, urging him to return home, since he had discovered a signorina possessed of all the charms and all the virtues that the heart of man could desire and—what, we fear, the worthy archdeacon considered of more importance than either—a little fortune of her own.

Carlo lost no time in obeying the avuncular summons, and speedily forgot all about his Pisan inamorata in contemplating the perfections of the lovely Letizia. Signora Fesch, as became a lady whose present and departed husbands had both eaten the bread of Genoa, had some scruples about allowing her daughter to enter a family which made no secret of its sympathies with Pasquale di Paoli, the “Washington of Corsica,” and the Party of Independence. But, since the young man was in other respects an eligible suitor—the standard of eligibility in Corsica, of course, differed very widely from that which prevailed at Pisa—and Letizia seemed to be as much in love with Carlo as he was with her, she decided to overlook the latter’s political predilections, and, on June 2, 1764,¹ the archdeacon pronounced the blessing of the Church on the young couple.

Corsican women are proud of their fecundity; it is almost a disgrace for them to have no children. Signora Bonaparte had no reason to reproach herself on that score, for in her nineteen years of married life she presented her husband with twelve tokens of her affection. However, Carlo Bonaparte was not destined to see quite so many olive-branches round about his table. Nature invariably exacts retribution from those who violate her laws, and of the first six children born of this premature marriage, four were either stillborn or died in early infancy. Since all of the remaining six survived to grow up, the loss of these four infants was perhaps a fortunate circumstance for Carlo Bonaparte’s mother, who, in a rash moment, which she must surely have regretted later, had made a vow that she would attend a mass every day for each grandchild with whom her daughter-in-law presented her. Even as matters were, the good lady must have spent a considerable portion of her days upon her knees.

The first of Letizia’s children destined to survive was born on January 7, 1768, at Corte, at the house of Tomaso Arrighi di Cazanova, an uncle of Carlo Bonaparte. The child—a fine, healthy boy—was called Giuseppe, after his paternal grandfather, though his name, like that of his brothers and sisters, was afterwards gallicized. Tomaso Arrighi and his wife stood sponsors, and the register in which his baptism is recorded is still preserved in the archives of the mairie at Corte. This, as Baron Larrey points out, effectually disposes of the story that Napoleon, and not the future King of Spain, was really the eldest son.¹

Some three months after the birth of her son, an incident occurred which, we are assured, greatly enhanced the high esteem in which Signora Bonaparte was already held by all who possessed the privilege of her acquaintance. During Holy Week, she happened to be visiting some friends at Bastia, and, together with a number of other ladies in the town, was the recipient of a request from the bishop of the diocese to set a good example to the poorer classes by confessing before Easter. Letizia, a devout Catholic, so far as forms and ceremonies went, hastened to comply with the episcopal wish, and presented herself, in all humility, at the confessional of the cathedral. But what was her astonishment and indignation when the confessor before whom she knelt, carried away by the contemplation of so much loveliness, proceeded to address to her questions which, it is to be sincerely hoped, are seldom heard at the tribunal of penitence! At first, the lady refused to reply, but, as the priest persisted in his sacrilegious interrogatory, she rose up, in all the majesty of offended virtue, and, raising her voice, exclaimed in the Corsican dialect: “Father, you are forgetting what is seemly!” The angry divine threatened to refuse her absolution, to which she scornfully replied : “You are at liberty to withhold it, but, if you do so, I will put you to shame before all the congregation.” The church was crowded, and the confessor, ashamed and humiliated, lost no time in pronouncing the desired absolution. However, some scraps of the conversation between him and his offended penitent had been overheard by those present, with the result that he was shortly afterwards dismissed by his superiors, while the conduct of the virtuous Letizia seems to have been the subject of universal admiration.¹

The desire that his wife’s confinement should take place amid the bracing air of Corte was not the only reason which had induced Carlo Bonaparte to remove temporarily from Ajaccio. A grave crisis in the history of the island was rapidly approaching, and young Bonaparte, who had become a very ardent patriot, was determined to play a part in it. “He was,” says a contemporary, “terribly impassioned for his country, which he desired should be free and independent, and for Paoli. This enthusiasm had caused him to abandon his native town, and to remove to Corte, where Paoli had his headquarters, with his wife, his uncle Napoleone, and Geltruda, his sister.”¹

The Corsicans had bitterly resented the article in the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis by which the island had been ceded to Genoa, and for several years they waged a fierce and sanguinary struggle against their masters, under the leadership of Sampiero Corso, who had served with distinction in the French army. Finally, Sampiero was assassinated,² and his followers submitted.

For more than a century and a half after the death of Sampiero, Corsica enjoyed comparative peace, though little else, since the Genoese ruled with an iron hand, and so mercilessly pillaged the wretched inhabitants that it became customary for a new official to inquire jestingly of a retiring one: “Have you left anything to take?” At length, in 1730, the people rose in revolt against their oppressors, and for thirty-four years the unhappy land was given over to anarchy and bloodshed. French, Sardinians, English, and Austrians lent their assistance to one side or the other, and marched up and down the country, burning and pillaging. It was during this period that Gaffori, Rivarola, and Giacinto Paoli and his two sons, Clemente and Pasquale, sprang into fame. It was during this period, also, that there appeared that strange adventurer Theodore von Neuhof, who exercised a brief period of sovereignty, under the title of King Theodore I, but was soon compelled to vacate his kingdom, and died in London, in 1756, a pensioner on the bounty of Horace Walpole. Finally, in 1764, the Genoese finding that the insurgents, under the able leadership of Pasquale Pa...