The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4). William Milligan Sloane
of Charles, Lucien Buonaparte, archdeacon of the cathedral. It was he who had supported and guided his nephew, and had sent him to the college founded by Paoli at Corte. In his youth Charles was wasteful and extravagant, but his wife was thrifty to meanness. With the restraint of her economy and the stimulus of his uncle, respected as head of the family, the father of Napoleon arrived at a position of some importance. He practised his profession with some diligence, became an assessor of the highest insular court, and in 1772 was made a member, later a deputy, of the council of Corsican nobles.
The sturdy mother was most prolific. Her eldest child, born in 1765, was a son who died in infancy; in 1767 was born a daughter, Maria-Anna, destined to the same fate; in 1768 a son, known later as Joseph, but baptized as Nabulione; in 1769 the great son, Napoleone. Nine other children were the fruit of the same wedlock, and six of them—three sons, Lucien, Louis, and Jerome, and three daughters, Elisa, Pauline, and Caroline—survived to share their brother's greatness. Charles himself, like his short-lived ancestors—of whom five had died within a century—scarcely reached middle age, dying in his thirty-ninth year. Letitia, like the stout Corsican that she was, lived to the ripe age of eighty-six in the full enjoyment of her faculties, known to the world as Madame Mère, a sobriquet devised by her great son to distinguish her as the mother of the Napoleons.
CHAPTER III.
Napoleon's Birth and Childhood[1].
Birth of Nabulione or Joseph—Date of Napoleon's Birth—Coincidence with the Festival of the Assumption—The Name of Napoleon—Corsican Conditions as Influencing Napoleon's Character—His Early Education—Childish Traits—Influenced by Traditions Concerning Paoli—Family Prospects—Influence of Marbeuf—Upheavals in France—Napoleon Appointed to a Scholarship—His Efforts to Learn French at Autun—Development of His Character—His Father Delegate of the Corsican Nobility at Versailles.
1768–79.
The trials of poverty made the Buonapartes so clever and adroit that suspicions of shiftiness in small matters were developed later on, and these led to an over-close scrutiny of their acts. The opinion has not yet disappeared among reputable authorities that Nabulione and Napoleone were one and the same, born on January seventh, 1768, Joseph being really the younger, born on the date assigned to his distinguished brother. The earliest documentary evidence consists of two papers, one in the archives of the French war department, one in those of Ajaccio. The former is dated 1782, and testifies to the birth of Nabulione on January seventh, 1768, and to his baptism on January eighth; the latter is the copy, not the original, of a government contract which declares the birth, on January seventh, of Joseph Nabulion. Neither is decisive, but the addition of Joseph, with the use of the two French forms for the name in the second, with the clear intent of emphasizing his quality as a Frenchman, destroys much of its value, and leaves the weight of authority with the former. The reasonableness of the suspicion seems to be heightened by the fact that the certificate of Napoleon's marriage gives the date of his birth as February eighth, 1768. Moreover, in the marriage contract of Joseph, witnesses testify to his having been born at Ajaccio, not at Corte.
But there are facts of greater weight on the other side. In the first place, the documentary evidence is itself of equal value, for the archives of the French war department also contain an extract from the one original baptismal certificate, which is dated July twenty-first, 1771, the day of the baptism, and gives the date of Napoleone's birth as August fifteenth, 1769. Charles's application for the appointment of his two eldest boys to Brienne has also been found, and it contains, according to regulation, still another copy from the original certificate, which is dated June twenty-third, 1776, and also gives what must be accepted as the correct date. This explodes the story that Napoleon's age was falsified by his father in order to obtain admittance for him to the military school. The application was made in 1776 for both boys, so as to secure admission for each before the end of his tenth year. It was the delay of the authorities in granting the request which, after the lapse of three years or more, made Joseph ineligible. The father could have had no motive in 1776 to perpetrate a fraud, and after that date it was impossible, for the papers were not in his hands; moreover, the minister of war wrote in 1778 that the name of the elder Buonaparte boy had already been withdrawn. That charge was made during Napoleon's lifetime. His brother Joseph positively denied it, and asserted the fact as it is now substantially proved to be; Bourrienne, who had known his Emperor as a child of nine, was of like opinion; Napoleon himself, in an autograph paper still existing, and written in the handwriting of his youth, thrice gives the date of his birth as August fifteenth, 1769. If the substitution occurred, it must have been in early infancy. Besides, we know why Napoleon at marriage sought to appear older than he was, and Joseph's contract was written when the misstatement in it was valuable as making him appear thoroughly French.
Among other absurd efforts to besmirch Napoleon's character is the oft-repeated insinuation that he fixed his birthday on the greatest high festival of the Roman Church, that of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, in order to assure its perpetual celebration! In sober fact the researches of indefatigable antiquaries have brought to light not only the documentary evidence referred to, but likewise the circumstance that Napoleon, in one paper spelled Lapulion, was a not uncommon Corsican name borne by several distinguished men, and that in the early generation of the Buonaparte family the boys had been named Joseph, Napoleon, and Lucien as they followed one another into the world. In the eighteenth century spelling was scarcely more fixed than in the sixteenth. Nor in the walk of life to which the Buonapartes belonged was the fixity of names as rigid then as it later became. There were three Maria-Annas in the family first and last, one of whom was afterward called Elisa.
As to the form of the name Napoleon, there is a curious though unimportant confusion. We have already seen the forms Nabulione, Nabulion, Napoleone, Napoleon. Contemporary documents give also the form Napoloeone, and his marriage certificate uses Napolione. On the Vendôme Column stands Napolio. Imp., which might be read either Napolioni Imperatori or Napolio Imperatori. In either case we have indications of a new form, Napolion or Napolius. The latter, which was more probably intended, would seem to be an attempt to recall Neopolus, a recognized saint's name. The absence of the name Napoleon from the calendar of the Latin Church was considered a serious reproach to its bearer by those who hated him, and their incessant taunts stung him. In youth his constant retort was that there were many saints and only three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. In after years he had the matter remedied, and the French Catholics for a time celebrated a St. Napoleon's day with proper ceremonies, among which was the singing of a hymn composed to celebrate the power and virtues of the holy man for whom it was named. The irreverent school-boys of Autun and Brienne gave the nickname "straw nose"—paille-au-nez—to both the brothers. The pronunciation, therefore, was probably as uncertain as the form, Napaille-au-nez being probably a distortion of Napouilloné. The chameleon-like character of the name corresponds exactly to the chameleon-like character of the times, the man, and the lands of his birth and of his adoption. The Corsican noble and French royalist was Napoleone de Buonaparté; the Corsican republican and patriot was Napoléone Buonaparté; the French republican, Napoléon Buonaparte; the victorious general, Bonaparte; the emperor, Napoléon. There was likewise a change in this person's handwriting analogous to the change in his nationality and opinions. It was probably to conceal a most defective knowledge of French that the adoptive Frenchman, as republican, consul, and emperor, abandoned the fairly legible hand of his youth, and recurred to the atrocious one of his childhood, continuing always to use it after his definite choice of a country.
Stormy indeed were his nation and his birthtime. He himself said: "I was born while my country was dying. Thirty thousand French, vomited on our shores, drowning the throne of liberty in waves of blood—such was the horrid sight which first met my view. The cries of the dying, the groans of the oppressed, tears of despair, surrounded my cradle at my birth."
These were the words he used in 1789, while still a Corsican in feeling, when addressing Paoli. They strain chronology for the sake of rhetorical effect, but they truthfully picture