Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1895-02-17
Copyright, 1865, by John Clark Ridpath.l
 I.-ORIGIN.

| Xg.4SS@ IN - O2O IETITIA BoNAPARTE, MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. and the space there is a small gulf The island beast, sketehed flat on the sea, shows many black spots on the side: they are mountains. There are veins also, and these are swift streams; small circles in few p1aces-towns. The area of the broadside is 3, 376 square miles. It is more than twice as big as Rhode Tsland-smaller somewhat than Connec- ticut. And the population exceeds a quarter of a million.
 Of the towns here marked, we are concerned with only two; Corte and Ajaeeio The former is the old home of the Buonapartes; the latter, the place to which the family removed just at the time when, by the birth of man-child clad with thunder, 1t was destined to emerge from medieval obscurities, star like, Sirius-like, into the open sky of fame.
 The genesis of Napoleon touches q re-
 
 of the West-Aryan races have eontribut- cd to the population of the island i'll which he was born. The people and the architecture alike show traces of all these remote but potent influences in de- termining the final race-character of the Corsicans who, after the fifteenth cen- tury, became essentially Italian. The race is thus composite i'll its derivation to as great a degree as any people in the world Besides the ethnio origin, the enVironment-the narrow confines of the island, it's mountainous character it's pleasant situation in the pellucid waters of the Mediterranean, its easy distance from the long bending line of one of the most famous coasts of the world-has tended powerfully, by the reactions of nature on the human animal, to estab- fish and confirm the small insular race whose one man was destined to give it a conspicuous place in human annals.
 The Buonapartes were true Corsicang The family reaches back obscurely into the Middle Ages The name is Italian, and shows linguistically an origin as remote as the Renaissance. There were Italian as well as Corsioan Buonapartes. A family of this name lived in the Tus- can city of Sarzana; another perhaps, in Genoa, and another at Florence. Ex- amples are found in which the spelling is given thus-Buona Parte They of Sarazana were ennobled in the sixteenth century, and continued to write their name with a di, or de, until the epoch when the Great One was born. The no- blesse, however. became attenuated, both in Tuscany and in the island, whereto branch of the family, at some unknown date, removed and established itself at Corte or Alaccio.
 At the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury the head of the Corsioan Buona- partes was Joseph, grandfather of Ma poleon. The family resided at Corte, in the center of the island. Joseph received a patent of nobility from the grand duke of Tuscany, making him patrician; and this worthless distinction was car ried down to his son, Carlo Buonaparte, whose rights were confirmed by the Archbishop of Pisa and the King of France.
 The geographical position of Corsica made it bone of contention among the Powers. From the sixteenth to the eight eenth century the island was under the suzerainty of Genoa The people were partisans. Some favored the Genoese; some, tho French; and some, other Ital- ian States. At the middle of the eight senth century, there was turbulence. The patriots rose against Genoa, and certain General Von Neuhof was about to be made king, when a French army under General Marbmuf was sent into the island to bring it into subjection. The French had just lost their colonial empire Ill North America, and were anxious to make gain ill the Mediter- ranean to eounterbalance tho growing power of Great Britain.
 After the episode of Von Neuhof, the patriot leader Pascal Paoli gained an as- tendency in Corsica, and became dieta- tor He contended valiantly for the in- dependence of his country, and for while held his powerful enemies at bay. This, however, could not last The French party among the Corsicans de- sired the breaking of all connection be- tween their country and the petty state of Genoa, and a union with the power ful kingdom of France The cause of