HEROINE OF CORSICA

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 2 April 1927, Page 9

HEROINE OF CORSICA

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE'S MOTHER

QHLARLES Bonaparte was eighteen, i a peasant, careless, extravagant! fellow, with a talent for poetry, and Leticia was told to marry him. Obedience was her religion, and at thirteen years of ago she became his wife. Her first three babies died. In 1768 Corsica became French, and Letizia and her husband, mounted on a little shaggy horse, came to Paoli at Corto to offer him their services and lives. She followed her husband through the first campaign, and when diaster befcl the Corsicans the husband and wife and their little Joseph hid in cave«. Another child was expected, bur this girl of eighteen went through rivers and forests with her baby in her arms* and her boy husband by her side. The French people heard of her courage, and generally gave them a safe passage to their home in Ajaccio. There, in August, 1769, Napeleou was born, or as they called him Nabulionello. At nine the young Napeleon, with his brother Joseph, went to school at Autun, in France. At thirty-two Madame Bonaparte was left a widow, and had to set to work to rear her babies. When the Revolution blazed out in France, she wrote to Napoleon to stay -where he was. Trouble broke out kn Corsica. Paoli wanted to separate if from France, and join it to England, He threatened Letizia that if she | did *ot get her sons to fight for him her proptuty would be confiscated. He ’

even ordered that the Bonapartes should be brought to him alive or dead. The three boys fled in disguise; and their mother was left alone. “You must think only of your mother when you have saved your country.’’ Night and day she watched her children, and feared that tragedy was at hand. Armed men broke in upon her one night, but they were friends to convey her and the children to safety in the mountains. Hidden in the dense scruD, they hoard the Paolists pass near them to burn the house of Bonaparte. After incredible sufferings they finally reached Toulon, with nothing but tho clothes they stood up in. Najioleon, now an officer of artillery, gave them most of his earnings, and borrowed money for their pressing needs. Napoleon married Josephine, whom his mother distrusted from the first. Then came the appointment to the command of the armies in Italy, and the victories which’ made her tho happiest of mothers. Back sue went to the old white house in Ajaccio. A new epoch dawned for her when in 1799 she came to Paris. Her son was now First Consul, and destined to be Emperor, and she was made the first lady of tho Legion of Honour. When Napoleon was in exile in Elba his mother visited him, for he was dearer to her in his trouble than ever he had been in his glory. In 1836 she passed “to where beyond these voices there is peace.’’