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| ISBN-13: | 9781939578723 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pitchstone Publishing |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 543 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Napoleon Against Himself
A Psychobiography
By Avner Falk
Pitchstone Publishing
Copyright © 2007 Avner FalkAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-939578-72-3
CHAPTER 1
A Suffering Motherland
Each of us is born into a particular physical and emotional environment. A person's birthplace is a psychogeographic and cultural entity, with its own special history, language, religion, traditions, customs, morals, myths, and manners. To understand a man's development and character, it is essential to examine both the land of his birth and his family of origin, both his motherland or fatherland and his parents.
Napoleon's motherland was Corsica, an oft-invaded Mediterranean island west of Rome. In the fourth and third centuries BCE., the Greeks, Etruscans, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians fought over Corsica's eastern seaboard. The Romans conquered the island in 259 BCE and turned it into a Roman province. From 450 to 1050 CE, Corsica was occupied by the Vandals, Byzantines, Goths, Lombards, Franks, Roman Catholic Popes, and Moors. Pisa and Genoa fought over Corsica until the Genoese took over the island in 1284. Genoa fought the Spanish kingdom of Aragon over Corsica for one hundred and thirty-seven years, from 1297 to 1434, and retained control of it.
Each of these conquerors put its own cultural stamp on the Corsican island. Dorothy Carrington thought that the Genoese treated the Corsicans as inferior, while the Corsicans, "with few exceptions, detested the Genoese as tyrants and exploiters. With some justification: the Corsicans had little say in the government of their country; all the posts of authority were held by the Genoese. Their magistrates were notoriously corrupt and they imposed trade monopolies that condemned the Corsicans to poverty."
Eighteenth-century European society was stratified, divided into the nobility, the clerics, the bourgeoisie, and the peasants. The Corsican nobles suffered from the ruling Genoese, whose Republic occasionally recognized the nobility of some old Corsican feudal families but did not grant nobility titles. Some families claimed that their nobility had been conferred on them by the Papacy in the Middle Ages in return for an obligation to repel Moorish invaders. As we will see later, only after the French conquest of Corsica did the Corsican nobility regain its former status.
During the first part of the eighteenth century the clannish Corsicans fell into two camps. The majority was nationalist and anti-Genoese, while the minority was pro-Genoese. The patriots were fiercely independent people who stubbornly resisted "foreign" domination. Corsica had a national assembly, the consulta, in which major political decisions were taken. The Corsican consulta elected three generali della nazione (Generals of the Nation) who ran the island. The consulta did not meet regularly but was convened in exceptional circumstances, infrequent before the great eighteenth-century revolt, when the Corsican patriots rebelled against harsh Genoese rule. Their leader was Giacinto Paoli, a rural notable from Stretta di Morosaglia. In 1730 the "rebels" seized the Corsican interior, while the Genoese held the coastal towns. In 1731 Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, reigning in Vienna, sent his troops to aid Genoa in suppressing the Corsican nationalists. The first Austrian detachment was decimated by the angry Corsicans. The second beat the Corsicans into submission.
In 1732 Austria forced Genoa to give the Corsican rebels some liberties. The following year, the Corsican revolt against Genoa broke out again. In January 1735 the three generali della nazione, Andrea Colonna-Ceccaldi, Giacinto Paoli, and Luigi Giafferi, convened a consulta at Corte which proclaimed Corsican national independence and its new system of government, in effect, adopting a new constitution. The three leaders were proclaimed the Primates of the Realm; the Virgin Mary was proclaimed the Queen of Corsica; and the Corsicans made the Catholic chant "Dio vi salvi Regina" ("God Save You, Queen") their national anthem. In 1736 they crowned as their king Theodor von Neuhof (1694–1756), a bizarre German adventurer and former officer in the French, Swedish, and Spanish armies who had landed in Corsica, perhaps escaping trouble elsewhere. Crowned King Theodore I of Corsica, Neuhof left the island — and his subjects — soon thereafter. In 1738, committing the same error that Austria had committed seven years earlier, Louis XV's France sent troops to Corsica to help Genoa suppress the fiery Corsican nationalists. The first French detachment was crushed by the Corsicans. In 1739 the marquis de Maillebois led a French expeditionary force to Corsica, and the French Royal Corsican Regiment was created.
In 1745 the Corsican consulta elected three new generali della nazione — Gian Pietro Gaffori, Alerio Manta, and Ignazio Venturini. British and Sardinian forces intervened on the Corsican nationalists' side against France and Genoa. The eighteenth-century "Kingdom of Sardinia" was an unusual union of four territories: the Italian island of Sardinia, south of Corsica; the Italian region of the Piedmont; the Franco-Italian duchy of the Savoy; and the French-speaking county of Nice. These four regions were not all contiguous, nor did they all speak the same language. Sardinia-Piedmont-Savoy, fearing French rule in neighboring Corsica, allied itself with Great Britain against France. But it was not until 1751 when the generale della nazione Gian Pietro Gaffori convened a consulta at the convent of Orezza and organized a Corsican government along the lines of the 1735 constitution. The Corsican consulta adopted this system of government with Gaffori as its head of state. He was assassinated in 1753. His son, Francesco Gaffori, became prominent in the revolt against France, but in 1769 he surrendered to the French, collaborated with them, became le colonel François Gaffori, and commanded the régiment provincial corse, a French regiment of Corsican collaborators. He later helped the French forces to supress a bloody Corsican national revolt.
During the six years the French administered Corsica, Giacinto Paoli and his family were banished from Corsica and left for the kingdom of Naples. Giacinto Paoli became a colonel of a Corsican regiment in the Neapolitan army. The war against France went on. Giacinto Paoli's son was the famous Corsican nationalist leader Pasquale Filippo Antonio Paoli, known to the French as Pascal Paoli. He is still revered by most Corsicans as U babu di a patria (the father of the fatherland). Pasquale Paoli was born on April 26, 1725, at Stretta di Morosaglia, in the Rostino region of eastern Corsica. He began his studies in Corsica, and after his family's banishment by the French in 1739, Pasquale attended the Naples military academy. In 1741 he joined his father's Corsican regiment in the Neapolitan army. In 1749 he was sent to Sicily. Due to its strategic location, Corsica was a battleground for the ambitions of the European powers. One of these powers was Sardinia-Piedmont-Savoy; another was France. In 1749 and 1751 Pasquale Paoli tried to join the French army but failed. In 1754 he was transferred to the isle of Elba, whence he corresponded with his brother and with the Corsican patriots, who asked him to devise a constitution and invited him to return.
In April 1755, Paoli returned to Corsica and the Corsican nationalists defeated the pro-Genoese faction. On July 14 and 15 the consulta was convened, electing Paoli their generale della nazione. This island was independent for fourteen years, the only such period in Corsican history, before being annexed by France in 1769.
Ancien-régime France was divided into civilian intendances (superintendencies) and into gouvernements militaires (military governments). These divisions roughly corresponded to the old duchies and provinces such as Normandy, Brittany, Provence, Burgundy, and the Franche-Comté. Each French province had its own military governor and civilian superintendent. The two officials had different functions. While the governor lived in the provincial capital, near the people of his province, and commanded the French troops in his area, the superintendent often visited the royal court at Versailles, near Paris.
In 1768 the Treaty of Versilles gave Corsica to France. It took the French another year to take possession of Corsica from Paoli's "rebels." When Louis XVI's France annexed Corsica and made it a French province, a military gouverneur and a civilian intendant were appointed to the island. The duke of Choiseul passed over Louis-Charles-René comte de Marbeuf for the post of governor and appointed General comte de Vaux as commander-in-chief of the French forces on Corsica. Deeply hurt, Marbeuf wanted to plead his case in Paris but had to stay in Corsica to fight the "rebels." A French nobleman named Chardon was appointed superindendent for Corsica. Meanwhile, Paoli governed the Corsican interior while France held the coastal towns. After France annexed Corsica, Paoli issued a defiant proclamation to the Corsican nation and bravely but desperately resisted the French occupation.
In March 1769 General comte de Vaux landed heavy troop reinforcements for his French army at Bastia. He was joined there by his fellow general, Jean-François, comte de Narbonne-Pelet -Fritzlar, a hero of the Seven Years War and a rival of Marbeuf. Narbonne used executions and massacres to subdue the Corsican rebels, yet he was far more popular than Marbeuf. "In view of his scorched-earth tactics, Narbonne's popularity is hard to understand; but his victims were after all humble people who had no voice in public affairs, while his supporters were notables delighted to see order restored. According to a French officer then serving in Corsica, Narbonne's forthright character, combining severity with a sense of justice, endeared him to the army, whereas Marbeuf, never a military figure, failed to earn its respect."
To fight the French, the Corsican consulta at Corte mobilized all Corsican men aged sixteen to sixty. In fact, the Corsicans were by no means united on the issue of the revolt. Most of the common people wanted to fight, while the nobility wanted to join forces with France. On May 8 and 9, 1769, French forces massacred Paoli's rebels at the Battle of Ponte Novo. Paoli fled the island, eventually taking refuge in England.
In August 1769 General comte de Marbeuf, in rivalry with Generals comtes de Vaux and Narbonne, left Corsica for Paris to secure his position as commander-in-chief of the French army in Corsica. He succeeded in securing his appointment and returned to Corsica in May 1770 as commander-in-chief of the French forces and military governor of the island. The comte de Vaux left for France, and Marbeuf ruled Corsica. He now decided who joined the ranks of the nobility and who was appointed to political office. A month earlier the French authorities took a census of the Corsican population and created the Ordre de la noblesse corse (Order of the Corsican Nobility). Seventy Corsican families were recognized as noble. Some of them were old feudal nobles, others were descendants of corporals who had toppled the former in the Au-deça des monts from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, while still others were members of the foreign nobility which had settled in the island. Governor Marbeuf was the real authority. "All blessings and honours flowed from Marbeuf; he virtually ruled the island, together with the intendant. But while the intendants came and went ... Marbeuf, as commander-in-chief, reigned in Corsica from 1770 till his death in 1786."
Marbeuf played a very significant role in Napoleon's life. He had a close relationship with Napoleon's mother Letizia over many years and was rumored to have fathered one or more of her children. During the years of his involvement with Letizia, Marbeuf supported her husband Carlo financially and socially, helping him achieve noble status, obtain legal positions, and finance his economic projects. Marbeuf's nephew, Yves-Alexandre de Marbeuf, was the bishop of Autun and later the archbishop of Lyon. He too helped Napoleon and his family. As we shall see, Napoleon had strong and ambivalent feelings about Marbeuf, which in turn affected his feelings about Corsica and France.
CHAPTER 2A Conflicted Marriage
Many scholars believed that in 1796 Napoleon changed his last name from Buonaparte to Bonaparte, to make it sound more French. In fact, both spellings of the name were used by members of Napoleon's family in official documents. Name-spelling consistency and accuracy did not bother eighteenth-century Europeans as it does us today. Napoleon's ancestors in Italy were called Buonaparte. After they moved to Corsica in the sixteenth century, some of them spelled their name Bonaparte, but Napoleon's father spelled it Buonaparte. The French military hospital of Val-de-Grace in Paris has a letter from Napoleon signed Buonaparte. He used both spellings until 1796, when he took command of the French armée d'Italie, and even during his Italian campaign of 1796–97. When Napoleon entered French politics in 1797, he dropped the spelling of Buonaparte and began to spell his name Bonaparte.
The name Buonaparte first appeared in a Tuscan document of 1122, which mentions an officer named Ugo fighting for Friedrich the One-eyed, duke of Swabia and nephew of the German king and Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich V, to conquer Tuscany from the pope. The pope and the Holy Roman Emperor were, as always, struggling for supremacy. Ugo's nephew became a member of the Florentine signoria (governing council) and took the name of Ugo della Buonaparte, from the Italian words della buona parte (of the good party). To Ugo, the "good party" was that of the emperor; the "bad party" was the papal one. The name Buonaparte was borne by several late-medieval families in Liguria and Tuscany; one of these families had settled near the Tuscan capital of Florence in the eleventh century. In the thirteenth century this family split into two branches. One of them settled in the Tuscan town of San Miniato, southwest of Florence, the other in the Ligurian seaport town of Sarzana, near La Spezia, across the border from Tuscany.
In 1520, shortly after the Genoese had built Ajaccio's ramparts in Corsica, Francesco Buonaparte of Sarzana, a swarthy Tuscan mercenary known as Il Moro di Sarzana (the Moor of Sarzana), moved to Ajaccio, where Genoa kept its garrisons. In Corsica the name Buonaparte later became Bonaparte; Napoleon was Francesco's eighth descendant. Because its members were the elders of the town, the Ajaccio City Council was called il consiglio degli anziani (the council of the elders). The Bonapartes were elected anziani of Ajaccio in every generation from the late sixteenth century to 1764. In the late seventeenth century the Bonapartes began to intermarry with the Bozzi, acquiring their house and annexing it to theirs in the process.
The name Maria was ubiquitous in Corsica. In the Corsican soul, the Virgin Mary had replaced the magna mater (Great Mother) goddess of pagan antiquity. Her ubiquity in Corsica attests to the great emotional power of the mother in the Corsican mind. Due to her maternal aspects, the cult of the Virgin Mary was prominent among the Roman Catholic Corsicans. Many Corsican girls were named Maria, and many Corsican boys had Maria as a middle name. Thus, Napoleon's paternal great great great grandfather was named Carlo Maria, as was Napoleon's father; Napoleon's maternal great grandfather was named Giuseppe Maria; Napoleon's maternal grandmother was named Angela Maria; his paternal grandfather was named Giuseppe Maria; and his mother was named Maria Letizia. Napoleon himself would have several lovers named Maria or Marie, and a second wife named Marie-Louise.
The typical Corsican family was fusional. Personal boundaries between parents and children were not clear. Family members shared first or middle names as well as last names. The three commissioners sent to Corsica by the French Convention nationale in 1792 to determine its value to France reported: "One is not a Corsican without belonging to a family ... There reigns in this island a fanaticism of relationship which binds the members of a family together so tightly that the feelings and actions of a single individual become the common and inalienable property of all; whence it follows that as soon as a man is on his feet he forthwith tries every means, undeterred by any scruple, to put all his relations on their feet also." The sharing of Christian names among family members was not the cause of the fusional quality of the Corsican family but rather its symptom.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Napoleon Against Himself by Avner Falk. Copyright © 2007 Avner Falk. Excerpted by permission of Pitchstone Publishing.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,Part I: Between Two Motherlands,
1. A Suffering Motherland,
2. A Conflicted Marriage,
3. No Milk for Napoleon,
4. A New Motherland,
5. A Turbulent Adolescent,
6. Corsica or France?,
7. Farewell to Mother Corsica,
8. Through a Psychological Lens,
PART II: Becoming a Historical Figure,
9. The Struggle to Master Inner Helplessness,
10. Love, Depression, and Progression,
11. Inventing Josephine,
12. In War and in Love,
13. War as a Cure for Depression,
14. Facing the Ottomans and the British,
15. France's Ruler,
16. Boundless Power,
17. Imperial Ambitions and Infernal Machines,
18. Taking on England,
19. Kidnapping and Executing a Young Duke,
Part III: Emperor of the French,
20. Of Cocks and Bees,
21. Trafalgar and Beyond,
22. The Jews as a Projection of Napoleon's Self,
23. The Polish Lover,
24. Midlife Crisis,
Part IV: Self-Inflicted Downfall,
25. Wars, Narcissism, and Oedipal Struggles,
26. Self-Destructive Moves,
27. More Plots and Conspiracies,
28. New War with Austria,
29. Divorce and Second Marriage,
30. Fathering A Legitimate Son and Entering Russia,
31. A Suicidal Invasion,
32. Exile in Elba,
33. Returning to France,
34. Waterloo,
35. Final Exile and Death,
Acknowledgments,
Notes,
References,
Index,
About the Author,