The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-12-07

ing the big house, however. l made a
little journey of the imagination back to
that August 10 in tn eyear 1860.
The Day Napoleon Was Born
1t was the Feast of the Assumption,
ever the greatest day in the religious
calendar for the Corsicans. The little town
had given itself over to the holiday and
the country people had been swarming
In a-foot and on mule back since early
morning. The bells We're ringing the
hcuses We're green with boughs and the
cathedral altar was abloom with wild
flowers from the mountain side.
In the middle of the forenoon the beau
tiful Signora Bonaparte-a girl of 19-
leading by the hand her 6-year-old half
brother, Joseph F'esch. and followed by
her husbands uncle, Luciano, and her
husbands sister-in-law, Geltruda Para
vacini, came out of that front door over
which the tablet now rests and made her
way down this street TWO blocks to the
cathedral. There, among the kneeling
worshipers at the mass, she received the
painful warnings of maternity. Calling
for the aid of her companion, she was as
sisted to her feet and led out of the crowd
ed church and along this street again to
her home. There she sank upon a sofa
and at IL o'clock in the morning Ma
poleon entered the world.
No physician had been summoned. No
midwife was in attendance, and that Of
flee was fulfilled by Signora Paravicini
aided by the maid of all work, Mann
muca Caternia-you note that history
has treasured all this time every name
connected with the opening scene in the
great drama.
There was, moreover, a stirring pro-
logue to this drama some 80 miles away
in the wild heart of this then half bar
barous island Thither the ina gination
made another journey before l crossed
the threshold of the birthplace and it
carried my thoughts to the savage Cor
sican mountains, the first background in
the life of Napoleon, his prenatal en-
vironment which appropriately was a
| scene of war, crowded with moving acct
dents by flood and field. For 40 years a
primitive and liberty loving people, only
100 600 in all, Italian in speech and by
tradition, but Corsicans at heart, had
been struggling for their independence,
first against the rich republic of Genoa
and at last against the great kingdom
of France, to which the Genoese had
pawned the sovereignty of Corsica, with
its less than 1000 square miles of wild
mountains and valleys.
Ajaccio, being a seaport. the invader
had readily captured it, and the patriotic
Bonapartes, men and women together,
fled the town to join the patriot army,
"
the secretary of Paoli, the general in
chief. At one time, a year and half
before the date on the tablet, the signora
! took refuge in old house in the little
mountain town of Corte, then the Corsican
capital, where she gave birth to son.
| The house stands to this dat, and in
scribed amid the many battle scars on its
walls is the announcement that it is the
! birthplace of King Joseph of Spain.
His Mother With the Army
| The next year. when the despairine
| band of Corsicans was making its last
stand before the guns of Louis XIV, the
| brave young mother was the companion
| of her husband in the field Holding her
baby boy. Joseph, in one arm, she drove
| her saddle mule with her free hand
while, as she said. under my heart l
| carried my Napoleon. with the same
| calm pleasure that l felt afterward when
| | held hi min my arms and fed him at
my breast heard the balls
| wbistling round my ears. without q
| shadow of fear. as l trusted to the pro-
| lection of the Holy Virgin"
! Otter she slept in the open in the midst
| of the soldiers. On the long, swift marches
up and down and around the rugged
| mountains she rode beside or behind her
| husband and sometimes was obliged tc
! trudge afoot with the hunted army, pur-
sued everywhere by overwhelming forces
In newt the last battle she was present