CARLO BUONAPARTE [Charles Marie de Bonaparte] (1746-1785), the father of Napoleon I., took his degree in law at the university of Pisa, and after the conquest of Corsica by the French became assessor to the royal court of Ajaccio and the neighbouring districts. His restless and dissatisfied nature led him to press or intrigue for other posts, and to embark in risky business enterprises which compromised the fortune of his family for many years to come. In 1764 he married Letizia Ramolino, a beautiful and high-spirited girl, aged fourteen, descended from a well-connected family domiciled in Corsica since the middle of the 15th century. The first two children, born in 1765 and 1767, died in infancy; Joseph (see below), the first son who survived, was born in 1768, and Napoleon in 1769. The latter was born in the midst of the troubles consequent on the French conquest, Letizia having recently accompanied her husband in several journeys and escapes. Her firm and courageous disposition showed itself at that trying time and throughout the whole of her singularly varied career. Simple and frugal in her tastes, and devout in thought and manner of life, she helped to bind her children to the life of Corsica, while her husband, a schemer by nature and a Voltairian by conviction, pointed the way to careers in France, the opening up of which moulded the fortunes of the family and the destinies of Europe. He died of cancer in the stomach at Montpellier in 1785. Letizia lived to witness the glory and the downfall of her great son, surviving Napoleon I. by sixteen years. She never accommodated herself to the part she was called on to play during the Empire, and, though endowed with immense wealth and distinguished by the title of _Madame Mere_, lived mainly in retirement, and in the exercise of a strict domestic economy which her early privations had made a second nature to her, but which rendered her very unpopular in France and was displeasing to Napoleon. After the events of 1814 she joined the emperor in the island of Elba and was privy to his plans of escape, returning to Paris during the Hundred Days. After the final downfall of Waterloo, she took up her residence at Rome, where Pope Pius VII. treated her with great kindness and consideration, and protected her from the suspicious attentions of the powers of the Grand Alliance. In 1818 she addressed a pathetic letter to the powers assembled at the congress of Aix, petitioning for Napoleon's release, on the ground that his mortal illness had removed any possibility of his ever again becoming a menace to the world's peace. The letter remained unanswered, the powers having reason to believe that it was a mere political move, and that its terms had been previously concerted with Napoleon. Henceforth, saddened by the death of Napoleon, of her daughters Pauline and Elisa, and of several grandchildren, she lived a life of mournful seclusion. In 1829 she was