Friday, November 29, 2013

Where was Napoleon from?

Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea. A year before his birth, the Genoese Republic had ceded sovereign rights over the island to France. The Genoese had ruled over Corsica since the mid-sixteenth century, but due mainly to a forty year war with a growing Corsican resistance movement, the decision was made to sell the island. The Corsicans, then as now, had a fiercely independent streak and no more wanted to be controlled by the French than they had been by the Genoese. However, the French proved militarily more effective than the Genoese and ruthlessly crushed the nascent Corsican republic.
Even so, the spirit of Corsican independence lived on and was never entirely extinguished in the years ahead as the island passed between the ownership of Britain, Spain, and then back to a restored French monarchy after the fall of Napoleon. The man himself had been an ardent Corsican nationalist in his youth, speaking both Corsican and Italian before he learned how to speak French—with a marked Corsican accent he never lost. Yet when he became emperor, Napoleon neglected his native island, which once more faded back into the obscurity from which it had all too briefly been liberated by the escapades of its most famous son.

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