Four years passed: apparently they were uneventful, but in reality Choiseul made good use of his time. Through Buttafuoco he was in regular communication with that minority among the Corsicans which desired incorporation. By the skilful manipulation of private funds, and the unstinted use of money, this minority was before long turned into a majority. Toward the close of 1767 Choiseul began to show his hand by demanding absolute possession for France of at least two strong towns. Paoli replied that the demand was unexpected, and required consideration by the people; the answer was that the King of France could not be expected to mingle in Corsican affairs without some advantage for himself. To gain time Paoli chose Buttafuoco as his plenipotentiary, despatched him to Versailles, and thus fell into the very trap so carefully set for him by his opponent. He consented as a compromise that Corsica should join the Bourbon-Hapsburg league. More he could not grant for love of his wild, free Corsicans, and he cherished the secret conviction that, Genoa being no longer able to assert her sovereignty, France would never allow another power to intervene, and so, for the sake of peace, might accept this solution.

But the great French minister was a master of diplomacy and would not yield. In his designs upon Corsica he had little to fear from European opposition. He knew how hampered England was by the strength of parliamentary opposition, and the unrest of her American colonies. The Sardinian monarchy was still weak, and quailed under the jealous eyes of her strong enemies. Austria could not act without breaking the league so essential to her welfare, while the Bourbon courts of Spain and Naples would regard the family aggrandizement with complacency. Moreover, something must be done to save the prestige of France: her American colonial empire was lost; Catherine’s brilliant policy, and the subsequent victories of Russia in the Orient, were threatening what remained of French influence in that quarter. Here was a propitious moment to emulate once more the English: to seize a station on the Indian highroad as valuable as Gibraltar or Port Mahon, and to raise again high hopes of recovering, if not the colonial supremacy among nations, at least that equality which the Seven Years’ War had destroyed. Without loss of time, therefore, the negotiations were ended, and Buttafuoco was dismissed. On May fifteenth, 1768, the price to be paid having been fixed, a definitive treaty with Genoa was signed whereby she yielded the exercise of sovereignty to France, and Corsica passed finally from her hands. Paoli appealed to the great powers against this arbitrary transfer, but in vain.

The campaign of subjugation opened at once, Buttafuoco, with a few other Corsicans, taking service against his kinsfolk. The soldiers of the Royal Corsican regiment, which was in the French service, and which had been formed under his father’s influence, flatly refused to fight their brethren. The French troops already in the island were at once reinforced, but during the first year of the final conflict the advantage was all with the patriots; indeed, there was one substantial victory on October seventh, 1768, that of Borgo, which caused dismay at Versailles. Once more Paoli hoped for intervention, especially that of England, whose liberal feeling would coincide with his interest in keeping Corsica from France. Money and arms were sent from Great Britain, but that was all. This conduct of the British ministry was afterward recalled by France as a precedent for rendering aid to the Americans in their uprising against England.

The following spring an army of no less than twenty thousand men was despatched from France to make short and thorough work of the conquest. The previous year of bloody and embittered conflict had gone far to disorganize the patriot army. It was only with the utmost difficulty that the little bands of mountain villagers could be tempted away from the ever more necessary defense of their homes and firesides. Yet in spite of disintegration before such overwhelming odds, and though in want both of the simplest munition and of the very necessities of life, the forces of Paoli continued a fierce and heroic resistance. It was only after months of devastating, heartrending, hopeless warfare, that their leader, utterly routed in the affair known as the battle of Ponte-Nuovo, finally gave up the desperate cause. Exhausted, and without resources, he would have been an easy prey to the French; but they were too wise to take him prisoner. On June thirteenth, 1769, by their connivance he escaped, with three hundred and forty of his most devoted supporters, on two English vessels, to the mainland. His goal was England. The journey was a long, triumphant procession from Leghorn through Germany and Holland; the honors showered on him by the liberals in the towns through which he passed were such as are generally paid to victory, not to defeat. Kindly received and entertained, he lived for the next thirty years in London, the recipient from the government of twelve hundred pounds a year as a pension.

The year 1770 saw the King of France apparently in peaceful possession of that Corsican sovereignty which he claimed to have bought from Genoa. His administration was soon and easily inaugurated, and there was nowhere any interference from foreign powers. Philanthropic England had provided for Paoli, but would do no more, for she was busy at home with a transformation of her parties. The old Whig party was disintegrating; the new Toryism was steadily asserting itself in the passage of contemptuous measures for oppressing the American colonies. She was, moreover, soon to be so absorbed in her great struggle on both sides of the globe that interest in Corsica and the Mediterranean must remain for a long time in abeyance.

But the establishment of a French administration in the King’s new acquisition did not proceed smoothly. The party favorable to incorporation had grown, and, in the rush to side with success, it now probably far outnumbered the old patriots. At the outset they faithfully supported the conquerors in an attempt to retain as much of Paoli’s system as possible. But the appointment of a royal governor with a veto over legislation was essential. This of necessity destroyed the old democracy, for, in any case, such an office must create a quasi-aristocracy, and its power would rest not on popular habit and goodwill, but on the French soldiery. The situation was frankly recognized, therefore, in a complete reorganization of the old nobility, from among whom a council of twelve was selected to support and countenance the governor. Moreover, the most important offices were given into French hands, while the seat of government was moved from Corte, the highland capital, to the lowland towns of Bastia and Ajaccio. The primeval feud of highlanders and lowlanders was thus rekindled, and in the subsequent agitations the patriots won over by France either lost influence with their followers, or ceased to support the government. Old animosities were everywhere revived and strengthened, until finally the flames burst forth in open rebellion. They were, of course, suppressed, but the work was done with a savage thoroughness the memory of which long survived to prevent the formation in the island of a natural sentiment friendly to the French. Those who professed such a feeling were held in no great esteem.

It was perhaps an error that Paoli did not recognize the indissoluble bonds of race and speech as powerfully drawing Corsica to Italy, disregard the leanings of the democratic mountaineers toward France, sympathize with the fondness of the towns for the motherland, and so use his influence as to confirm the natural alliance between the insular Italians and those of the continent. When we regard Sardinia, however, time seems to have justified him. There is little to choose between the sister islands as regards the backward condition of both; but the French department of Corsica is, at least, no less advanced than the Italian province of Sardinia. The final amalgamation of Paoli’s country with France, which was in a measure the result of his leaning toward a French protectorate, accomplished one end, however, which has rendered it impossible to separate her from the course of great events, from the number of the mighty agents in history. Curiously longing in his exile for a second Sampiero to have wielded the physical power while he himself should have become a Lycurgus, Paoli’s wish was to be half-way fulfilled in that a warrior greater than Sampiero was about to be born in Corsica, one who should, by the very union so long resisted, come, as the master of France, to wield a power strong enough to shatter both tyrannies and dynasties, thus clearing the ground for a lawgiving closely related to Paoli’s own just and wise conceptions of legislation.

This scion was to come from the stock which at first bore the name of Bonaparte, or, as the heraldic etymology later spelled it, Buonaparte. There were branches of the same stock, or, at least, of the same name, in many other parts of Italy. Whatever the origin of the Corsican Buonapartes, it was neither royal from the twin brother of Louis XIV., thought to be the Iron Mask, nor imperial from the Julian gens, nor Greek, nor Saracen, nor, in short, anything which later-invented and lying genealogies declared it to be. But it was almost certainly Italian, and probably patrician, for in 1780 a Tuscan gentleman of the name devised a scanty estate to his distant Corsican kinsman. The earliest home of the family was Florence; later they removed for political reasons to Sarzana, in Tuscany, where for generations men of that name exercised the profession of advocates. They were persons of some local consequence in their latest seats, partly because of their Italian connections, partly in their substantial possessions of land, and partly through the official positions which they held in the city of Ajaccio. Their sympathies as lowlanders and townspeople were with the country of their origin and with Genoa. During the last years of the sixteenth century that republic authorized Jerome, then head of the family, to prefix the distinguishing particle “di” to his name; but the Italian custom was averse to its use, which was not revived until later, and then only for a short time.

Nearly two centuries passed before the grand duke of Tuscany issued formal patents in 1757, attesting the Buonaparte nobility. It was Joseph, the grandsire of Napoleon, who received them; soon afterward he announced that the coat-armor of the family was “la couronne de compte, l’ecusson fendu par deuce barres et deux étoilles, aver les lettres B. P. qui signifient Buona Parte, le fond des armes rougeâtres, les barres et les étoilles bleu, les ombrements et la couronne jaune!” Translated as literally as such doubtful language and construction can be, this signifies: “A count’s coronet, the escutcheon with two bends sinister and two stars, bearing the letters B. P., which signify Buonaparte, the field of the arms red, the bends and stars blue, the letters and coronet yellow!” In heraldic parlance this would be: Gules, two bends sinister between two estoiles azure charged with B. P. for Buona Parte, or; surmounted by a count’s coronet of the last.

In 1759 the same sovereign granted further the title of patrician. Charles, the son of Joseph, received a similar grant from the Archbishop of Pisa in 1769. These facts have a substantial historical value, since by reason of them the family was recognized as noble in 1771 by the French authorities, and as a consequence the most illustrious scion of the stem became, eight years later, the ward of a France which was still monarchical. Reading between the lines of such a narrative, it appears as if the short-lived family of Corsican lawyers had some difficulty in preserving an influence proportionate to their descent, and therefore sought to draw all the strength they could from a bygone grandeur, easily forgotten by their neighbors in their moderate circumstances at a later day.

No task had lain nearer to Paoli’s heart than to unite in one nation the two factions into which he found his people divided. Accordingly, when Carlo Maria di Buonaparte, the single stem on which the consequential lowland family depended for continuance, appeared to pursue his studies at Corte, the stranger was received with flattering kindness, and probably, as one account has it, was appointed to a post of emolument and honor as Paoli’s private secretary. The new patrician, according to a custom common among Corsicans of his class, determined to take his degree at Pisa, and in November, 1769, he was made doctor of laws by that university. Many pleasant and probably true anecdotes have been told to illustrate the good-fellowship of the young advocate among his comrades while a student. There are likewise narratives of his persuasive eloquence and of his influence as a patriot, but these sound mythical. In short, an organized effort of sycophantic admirers, who would, if possible, illuminate the whole family in order to heighten Napoleon’s renown, has invented fables and distorted facts to such a degree that the entire truth as to Charles’s character is hard to discern.

Certain undisputed facts, however, throw a strong light upon Napoleon’s father. His people were proud and poor; he endured the hardships of poverty with equanimity. Strengthening what little influence he could muster, he at first appears ambitious, and has himself described in his doctor’s diploma as a patrician of Florence, San Miniato, and Ajaccio. On the other hand, with no apparent regard for his personal advancement by marriage, he followed his own inclination, and in 1764, at the age of eighteen, gallantly wedded a beautiful child of fifteen, Maria Letizia Ramolino. Her descent, though remotely noble, was far inferior to that of her husband, but her fortune was equal, if not superior, to his. Although well born, she was of peasant nature to the last day of her long life — hardy, unsentimental, frugal, and sometimes unscrupulous. Yet for all that, the hospitality of her little home in Ajaccio was lavish and famous. Among the many guests who were regularly entertained there was Marbeuf, commander in Corsica of the first army of occupation. There was long afterward a malicious tradition that the French general was Napoleon’s father. The morals of Letizia di Buonaparte, like those of her conspicuous children, have been bitterly assailed, but her own good name, at least, has always been vindicated. The evident motive of the story sufficiently refutes such an aspersion as it contains. Of the bride’s extraordinary beauty there has never been a doubt. She was a woman of heroic mold, like Juno in her majesty, unmoved in prosperity, undaunted in adversity. It was probably to his mother, whom he strongly resembled in childhood, that the famous son owed his tremendous, even gigantic, physical endurance.

After their marriage the youthful pair resided in Corte, waiting until events should permit their return to Ajaccio. Naturally of an indolent temperament, the husband, though he had at first been drawn into the daring enterprises of Paoli, and had displayed a momentary enthusiasm, was now, as he had been for more than a year, weary of them. At the head of a body of men of his own rank, he finally withdrew to Monte Rotondo, and on May twenty-third, 1769, a few weeks before Paoli’s flight, the band made formal submission to Vaux, commander of the second army of occupation, explaining through Buonaparte that the national leader had misled them by promises of aid which never came, and that, recognizing the impossibility of further resistance, they were anxious to accept the new government, to return to their homes, and to resume the peaceful conduct of their affairs. It was this precipitate naturalization of the father as a French subject which made his great son a Frenchman. Less than three months afterward, on August fifteenth, the fourth child, Napoleone di Buonaparte, was born in Ajaccio.

The resources of the Buonapartes, as they still wrote themselves, were small, although their family and expectations were large. An only child, and her mother having married a second time, Lætitia, to use the French form, inherited her father’s home and his vineyards. Her stepfather had been a Swiss mercenary in the pay of Genoa. In order to secure the woman of his choice he became a Roman Catholic, and was the father of Mme. di Buonaparte’s half-brother, Joseph Fesch. Charles himself was the owner of lands in the interior, but they were heavily mortgaged, and he could contribute little to the support of his family. His maternal uncle, a wealthy landlord, had died childless, leaving his domains to the Jesuits, and they had promptly entered into possession. According to the terms of his
grandfather’s will, the bequest was void, for the fortune was to fall in such a case to Charles’s mother, and on her death to Charles himself. Joseph, his father, had wasted many years and most of his fortune in weary litigation to recover the property. Nothing daunted, Charles settled down to pursue the same phantom, virtually depending for a livelihood on his wife’s patrimony. He became an officer of the highest court as assessor, and was made in 1772 a member, and 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. Lætitia, 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.