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[ "Miot de Melito," I., 131: "Having just left one of the most civilized cities in Italy, it was not without some emotion that I found myself suddenly transported to a country (Corsica) which, in its savage aspect, its rugged mountains, and its inhabitants uniformly dressed in coarse brown cloth, contrasted so strongly with the rich and smiling landscape of Tuscany, and with the comfort, I should almost say elegance, of costume worn by the happy cultivators of that fertile soil.">[
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[ Miot de Melito, II., 30: "Of a not very important family of Sartène."—II., 143. (On the canton of Sartène and the Vendettas of 1796).—Coston, I., 4: "The family of Madame Laetitia, sprung from the counts of Cotalto, came originally from Italy.">[
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[ His father, Charles Bonaparte, weak and even frivolous, "too fond of pleasure to care about his children," and to see to his affairs, tolerably learned and an indifferent head of a family, died at the age of thirty-nine of a cancer in the stomach, which seems to be the only bequest he made to his son Napoleon.—His mother, on the contrary, serious, authoritative, the true head of a family, was, said Napoleon, "hard in her affections she punished and rewarded without distinction, good or bad; she made us all feel it."—On becoming head of the household, "she was too parsimonious-even ridiculously so. This was due to excess of foresight on her part; she had known want, and her terrible sufferings were never out of her mind.... Paoli had tried persuasion with her before resorting to force... . Madame replied heroically, as a Cornelia would have done.... From 12 to 15,000 peasants poured down from the mountains of Ajaccio; our house was pillaged and burnt, our vines destroyed, and our flocks. ... In other respects, this woman, from whom it would have been so difficult to extract five francs, would have given up everything to secure my return from Elba, and after Waterloo she offered me all she possessed to restore my affairs." (" Mémorial," May 29, 1816, and "Mémoires d'Antonomarchi," Nov. 18, 1819.—On the ideas and ways of Bonaparte's mother, read her "Conversation" in "Journal et Mémoires," vol. IV., by Stanislas Girardin.) Duchesse d'Abrantès," Mémoires," II., 318, 369. "Avaricious out of all reason except on a few grave occasions.... No knowledge whatever of the usages of society.... very ignorant, not alone of our literature, but of her own."—Stendhal, "Vie de Napoleon": "The character of her son is to be explained by the perfectly Italian character of Madame Laetitia.">[
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[ The French conquest is effected by armed force between July 30, 1768, and May 22, 1769. The Bonaparte family submitted May 23, 1769, and Napoleon was born on the following 15th of August.]
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[ Antonomarchi, "Mémoires," October 4, 1819. "Mémorial," May 29, 1816.]