I Signori Buonaparte
This article, written by my father Francesco (Frank) Caponegro, was originally published in Unico, the Italian-American magazine for the greater Kansas City area.
Days before the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary ,1769, the day Napoleon I was born, a comet was seen from Ajaccio, Corsica. Another was reportedly seen from St. Helena shortly before he died, just as a comet heralded the death of Julius Caesar. This latterday Caesar, entitled to French citizenship from birth, was destined to become France’s greatest administrator, one of the greatest military geniuses of all time, and the man who inspired more books than any other figure in history. At the peak of his power, virtually all of continental Europe was either controlled by or allied with him. Imbued with the tenets of social equality inherited from the French Revolution, his reforms eradicated feudalism and serfdom from Europe. His Code Napoleon, a unification and codification of the laws of France, a revision of Roman Law, underlay the legal systems of Europe (notably that of Spain which in turn influenced the South American countries, and, interestingly, that of the province of Quebec and the state of Louisiana.)
And who was this Italian? Any literate person will tell you that he was a Corsican. But that person will have to be reminded that that Corsican was the son of Carlo Maria Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino. Carlo was the son of Giuseppe Maria Buonaparte and Maria Saveria Paravisino; Letizia, the daughter of Giovanni Ramolino and Angela Maria Pietrasanta. A little more research, I surmise, would reveal that the names of the great grandparents were no less Italian.
Italians in Corsica date back to the tenth century. Specifically, Genoa was in firm control of the island from 1569 to 1729. In 1729 the Corsicans rebelled, initiating a struggle that lasted for decades, culminating in the sale of the island to France in 1768, the year before Napoleon was born. French troops had intervened as far back as 1738, and now in 1769, as Napoleon related it later in life, “Thirty thousand Frenchmen spewed onto our coasts… tears of despair surrounded my cradle from the hour of my birth.” His second cousin, Angelo Matteo Bonelli, a guerrilla fighter nicknamed Zampaglino, was killing French grenadiers. From monasteries converted into arsenals, religious who recognized no authority but Rome, joined the resistance to the French invasion. One such person, Circinello, was actually Domenico Leca, a priest of Italian noble lineage.
This article is culled principally from “Napoleon and His Parents on the Threshold of History” by Dorothy Carrington, British scholar and authority on Corsica. The book covers the Buonaparte up to the time Napoleon was, at age sixteen, commissioned a second lieutenant from the Ecole Royale Militaire, Paris. The Encyclopedia Americana states that French is the official language of the island, but that an Italian dialect is the native tongue of Corsicans. Judging from the Carrington account, the educated Corsicans of Napoleon’s time spoke and wrote an Italian conforming with the standards on the Italian mainland. Carrington excerpts of Carlo Buonaparte’s memoires are in perfect Italian.
We will have more to say about the Buonaparte (Italian) or the Bonaparte (French,) but I will conclude this chapter with an anecdote from Carrington. Napoleon was delivered by Caterina, family servant and midwife. During the last days of his St.Helena exile he was to have said, “I entered the world in the arms of mammuccia Caterina.” It is difficult for me to imagine him saying it in French.