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in his hands; moreover, the Minister of War wrote in 1778 that the name of the elder Buonaparte boy had already been withdrawn.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. In the walk of life to which the Buonapartes belonged, the fixity of names was not 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. 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.

As to the given 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 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 his adoption. The Corsican noble and French royalist was Napoleone de Buonaparté; the Corsican republican and patriot was Napoleone 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, 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.”

Such 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 the circumstances under which he was conceived. There is a late myth which recalls in detail that when the pains of parturition seized his mother she was at mass, and that she reached her chamber just in time to deposit, on a piece of embroidery representing the young Achilles, the prodigy bursting so impetuously into the world. By the man himself his nature was always represented as the product of his hour, and this he considered a sufficient excuse for any line of conduct he chose to follow. When in banishment at Longwood, and on his death-bed, he recalled the circumstances of his childhood in conversations with the attendant physician, a Corsican like himself: “Nothing awed me; I feared no one. I struck one, I scratched another, I was a terror to everybody. It was my brother Joseph with whom I had most to do; he was beaten, bitten, scolded, and I had put the blame on him almost before he knew what he was about; was telling tales about him almost before he could collect his wits. I had to be quick: my mama Letitia would have restrained my warlike temper; she would not have put up with my defiant petulance. Her tenderness was severe, meting out punishment and reward with equal justice; merit and demerit, she took both into account.”

Of his earliest education he said at the same time: “Like everything else in Corsica, it was pitiful.” Lucien Buonaparte, his great-uncle, was a canon, a man of substance with an income of five thousand livres a year, and of some education—sufficient, at least, to permit his further ecclesiastical advancement. “Uncle” Fesch, whose father had received the good education of a Protestant Swiss boy, and had in turn imparted his knowledge to his own son, was the friend and older playmate of the turbulent little Buonaparte. The child learned a few notions of Bible history, and, doubtless, also the catechism, from the canon; by his eleven-year-old uncle he was taught his alphabet. In his sixth year he was sent to a dame’s school. The boys teased him because his stockings were always down over his shoes, and for his devotion to the girls, one named Giacominetta especially. He met their taunts with blows, using sticks, bricks, or any handy weapon. According to his own story, he was fearless in the face of superior numbers, however large. His mother declared that he was a perfect imp of a child. Of French he knew not a word; he had lessons at school in his mother tongue, which he learned to read under the instruction of the Abbé Recco.

This scanty information is all we possess. With slight additions from other sources it is substantially Napoleon’s own account of himself in that last period of self-examination when, to him, as to other men, consistency seems the highest virtue. He was, doubtless, striving to compound with his conscience emphasizing the adage that the child is father to the man — that he was born what he had always been.

In 1775 Corsica had been for six years in the possession of France, and on the surface all was fair. There was, however, a little remnant of faithful patriots left in the island, with whom Paoli and his banished friends were still in communication. The royal cabinet, seeking to remove every possible danger of disturbance, even so slight a one as lay in the disaffection of the few scattered nationalists, and in the unconcealed distrust which these felt for their conforming fellow-citizens, began a little later to make advances, in order, if possible, to win at least Paoli’s neutrality, if not his acquiescence. All in vain: the exile was not to be moved. From time to time, therefore, there was throughout Corsica a noticeable flow in the tide of patriotism. There are indications that the child Napoleon was conscious of this influence, listening probably with intense interest to the sympathetic tales about Paoli and his struggles for liberty which were still told among the people.

As to Charles de Buonaparte, some things he had hoped for from annexation were secured. His nobility and official rank were safe; he was in a fair way to reach even higher distinction. But what were honors without wealth? The domestic means were constantly growing smaller, while expenditures increased with the accumulating dignities and ever-growing family. He had made his humble submission to the French his reception had been warm and graceful. The authorities knew of his pretensions to the estates of his ancestors. The Jesuits had been disgraced and banished, but the property had not been restored to him; on the contrary, the buildings had been converted into school-houses, and the revenues turned into various channels. Years had passed, and it was evident that his suit was hopeless. How could substantial advantage for the part he had taken be secured from the King? His friends, General Marbeuf in particular, were of the opinion that he could profit to a certain extent at least by securing for his children an education at the expense of the state. The first steps were soon taken, and in 1776 the formal supplication for the two eldest boys was forwarded to Paris. Immediately the proof of four noble descents was demanded. The movement of letters was slow, that of officials even slower, and the delays in securing copies and authentications of the various documents were long and vexatious.

Meantime Choiseul had been disgraced, and on May tenth, 1774, the old King had died; Louis XVI. now reigned. The inertia which marked the brilliant decadence of the Bourbon monarchy was finally overcome. The new social forces were partly emancipated. Facts were examined, and their significance considered. Bankruptcy was no longer a threatening phantom, but a menacing reality of the most serious nature. Retrenchment and reform were the order of the day. Necker was trying his promising schemes. There was, among them, one for a body consisting of delegates from each of the three estates, — nobles, ecclesiastics, and burgesses, — to assist in deciding that troublesome question, the regulation of imposts. The Swiss financier hoped to destroy in this way the sullen, defiant influence of the royal intendants. In Corsica the governor and the intendant both thought themselves too shrewd to be trapped, securing the appointment from each of the Corsican estates of men who were believed by them to be their humble servants. The needy suitor, Charles de Buonaparte, was to be the delegate at Versailles of the nobility. They thought they knew this man in particular, but he was to prove as malleable in France as he had been in Corsica. Though nearly penniless, his vanity was tickled, and he accepted the mission, setting out in 1778 by way of Tuscany with his two sons Joseph and Napoleon. With them were Joseph Fesch, appointed to the seminary at Aix, and Varesa, Letitia’s cousin, who was to be sub-deacon at Autun. Joseph and Napoleon both asserted in later life that during their sojourn in Florence the grand duke gave his friend, the father, a letter to his sister, Marie Antoinette. As the grand duke was at that time in Vienna, the whole account they give of the journey is probably untrue. It was really to Marbeuf’s influence that the final partial success of Charles de Buonaparte’s supplication was due; to the general’s nephew, bishop of Autun, Joseph, now too old to be received in the royal military school, and later Lucien, were both sent, the former to be educated as a priest. It was probably Marbeuf’s influence also, combined with a desire to conciliate Corsica, which caused the heralds’ office finally to accept the documents attesting the Buonapartes’ nobility. On April twenty-third, 1779, Napoleon left Autun, having been admitted to Brienne, and it was to Marbeuf that in later life he attributed his appointment. After spending three weeks with a school friend, he entered upon his duties about the middle of May. On New Year’s day, 1779, the Buonapartes had arrived at Autun, and for three months the young Napoleone had been trained in the use of French. Prodigy as he was, his progress had been slow, the difficulties of that elegant and polished tongue having scarcely been reached; so that it was with a most imperfect knowledge of their language, and a sadly defective pronunciation, that he made his appearance among his future schoolmates at Brienne. There were one hundred and fifty of them, although the arrangement and theory of the institution had contemplated only one hundred and twenty, of whom half were to be foundationers. The instructors were Minim priests, and the life was as severe as it could be made with such a clientage under half-educated and inexperienced monks. In spite of all efforts to the contrary, however, the place had an air of elegance; there was a certain school-boy display proportionate to the pocket-money of the young nobles, and a very keen discrimination among themselves as to rank, social quality, and relative importance. Those familiar with the ruthlessness of boys in their treatment of one another can easily conceive what was the reception of the newcomer, whose nobility was unknown and unrecognized in France, and whose means were of the scantiest.

It appears that the journey from Corsica through Florence and Marseilles had already wrought a marvelous change in the boy. Napoleon’s teacher at Autun, the Abbé Chardon, described his pupil as having brought with him a sober, thoughtful character. He played with no one, and took his walks alone. The boys of Autun, says the same authority, on one occasion brought the sweeping charge of cowardice against all inhabitants of Corsica, in order to exasperate him. “If they [the French] had been but four to one,” was the calm, phlegmatic answer of the ten-year-old boy, “they would never have taken Corsica; but when they were ten to one . . .” “But you had a fine general — Paoli,” interrupted the narrator. “Yes, sire,” was the reply, uttered with an air of discontent, and in the very embodiment of ambition; “I should much like to emulate him.” The description of the untamed faun as he then appeared is not flattering: his complexion sallow, his hair stiff, his figure slight, his expression lusterless, his manner insignificant. Moreover, he spoke broken French with an Italian accent.

During his son’s preparatory studies at Autun the father had been busy at Versailles with further supplications — among them one for a supplement from the royal purse to his scanty pay as delegate, and another for the speedy settlement of his now notorious claim. The former of the two was granted not merely to M. de Buonaparte, but to his two colleagues, in view of the “excellent behavior” — otherwise subserviency — of the Corsican delegation at Versailles. When, in addition, the certificate of Napoleon’s appointment finally arrived, and the father set out to place his son at school, with a proper outfit, he had no difficulty in securing sufficient money to meet his immediate and pressing necessities; but more was not forthcoming.