Napoleon Was Born in France Fact

Was Napoleon Was Born in France?

Napoleon was born in France, but only technically. He was born in Corsica, a large island off the coast of Italy, only a year after it became a French territory.

The Origin of Napoleon

Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769, to Carlo Maria di Buonaparte and Maria Letizia Ramolino, in his family’s ancestral home Casa Buonaparte in Ajaccio, the capital of the island of Corsica. The Corsican Buonapartes were descended from minor Italian nobility of Tuscan origin, who had come to Corsica from Liguria in the 16th century.^[2]

Napoleon spent much of his boyhood in Corsica. As a teen he went to a military academy in France where he was mocked for his Corsican accent. During this time he changed his name from “Napoleone di Buonaparte” to “Napoléon Bonaparte” in order to sound more French.^[2]

Napoleon born in the French territory of Corsica, and that technically made him French in that respect. However, it is worth noting that Corsica had only just recently become a French Territory a year before Napoleon was born. Otherwise, the Buonapartes were descended from minor Italian nobility of Tuscan origin, so Napoleon was in many respects of Italian heritage and had he been born a year earlier would have simply been born in the independent Corsican Republic.

1. “NAPOLEON AND CORSICA“. Napoleon.org. Retrieved Oct 29, 2015.
2. “Napoleon“. Wikipedia.org. Retrieved Oct 29, 2015.