The Washington herald., 1913-12-07

crossed the threshold OF the birthplace
and it carried my thoughts to the saw
age Corsican mountains, the first back
ground in the life of Napoleon, his pre-
natal environment which appropriately
was a scene of war, crowded with NOV
ing accidents by flood and field. For
forty years a primitive and liberty low
ing people, only 10000 in all, italian in
speech and by tradition. but Corsicans
at heart. had been struggling for their
independence, first against the rich re-
public 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,
fed the town to join the patriot army,
where Signora Bonaparte's husband was
the secretary of Paoh. the general-in-
chief. At one time, a year and half
before the date on the tablet, the sig
nora took refuge in an old house in the
little mountain town of Corte, then the
Corsican capital, where she gave birth to
a son. The house stands to this day, and
inscribed amid the many battle scars on
its walls is the announcement that 1t
is the birthplace of King Joseph Of Spain
His Mother with the Army.
The next year, when the despairing
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 I
carried my Napoleon, with the same calm
pleasure that I felt afterward when I
held him in my arms and fed him at my
breast heard the balls whist
ling round my ears, without shadow
of fear, as I trusted to the protection Of
the Holy Virgin"
Often 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 be-
hind her husband and sometimes was
Obliged to trudge afoot with the hunted
army, pursued everywhere by over
whelming forces. In next the last bat
tie she was present on the field, and after
the final crushing defeat was among
those who fed from the conquering
French and hid in the Fugitives' Grotto,
which is still shown in a wilderness of
granite far up on the side Of Monte Ro-
tondo.
Might Have Been Born in England.
Some 200 Corsicans, determined never
to wear the yoke Of the French, gath
cred around their general-in-chief and
sailed away on an exile to England. Sig
nora Bonaparte's husband was eager to
60 with them. But for the objections
of the wife, who was to be a mother
again in three months, London and not
Ajaccio would have been the birthplace
Of Napoleon and he would have become
perhaps a British soldier. Yielding to
her counsels, the husband took the lead
in making peace with the French COM
mander.
The subjugation of Corsica was COM
plete-and France had annexed Napoleon
Bonapartei
And here I still stood before the house
in the Rue St Charles with the marble
tablet over the door, that lodestone which
draws the visitor in Ajaccio again and
again. To an American seeking dramatic
effects in the plebeian origin of the EN-
penor. this house is disappointment. 1t
is too large and too nearly palatial for
the purpose of contrast.