THE HISTORY OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE (1769 -1821)
Part I - The military career and the French Revolution.
Who was Napoleon Bonaparte? We imagine him on an unrestrained white horse, an extraordinary military leader. We also imagine him as a political leader, standing in a pose, with his hand in his jacket, pressed against his stomach. A sign of the fierce stomach pain he suffered from? No, simply a widespread custom among those who lent themselves to a portrait between the 18th and 19th centuries.
- Napoleon's childhood.
The Buonaparte family (this was the original name of the family, later Frenchized in Bonaparte) boasted noble Tuscan origins, even though they had moved to Corsica, then Genoese, as early as 1567. Ajaccio, the capital of Corsica, where he was born in 1769, had been in fact, sold by the Republic of Genoa to France for just a year. Napoleon's parents were of Tuscan origin and Italian was spoken in their home.
On April 23, 1779, thanks to the noble title acquired by his father Carlo, at the age of nine, the young Napoleon was admitted to the Royal School of Brienne-le-Château, in northern France, where he remained until October 17, 1784. For improve his French and prepare for school, before he attended the college of Autun for four months, his studies were financed thanks to a scholarship of two thousand francs.
Napoleon initially did not consider himself French and felt uncomfortable in an environment where his classmates were mostly from the ranks of the high aristocracy of France and cruelly made fun of him (the accusation of being a foreigner would have persecuted him For all life).
- The military career
on September 22, 1784 he was admitted to the Royal Military School of Paris, founded by Louis XV. In 1785 he passed into artillery, eager to abandon his studies as soon as possible to devote himself to his military career, which was very rapid. In fact, at just 16 years of age, he obtained his appointment as second lieutenant and was seconded, on 1 September 1785, to an artillery regiment stationed in La Fère, as second lieutenant, to take up the lieutenancy, a few months later, at a regiment stationed in Valence, in south-eastern France.
