10 Things You Didn't Know About Napoleon
1. Napoleon Was Technically Italian
Famous political leaders are constantly associated with the wrong nation. Mary Queen of Scots was raised in France, Stalin was Georgian, and Adolf Hitler was Austrian. Napoleon also falls into this same category, as he is actually of Italian heritage and had no French blood in him at all.
Napoleon was born on the French island of Corsica in 1769, but this island had only recently become French territory. In 1768, France bought the island of Corsica from Italy and sparked an anti-French revolution there. One of the leaders of this anti-French resistance was a man named Carlo Bonaparte, who in August 1769 became a father to his newborn son, Napoleoné. The Bonapartes had been residents of Italian Corsica since the 12th century and despite not being well off financially, they were considered a noble family due to the size of their house.
When the resistance was squashed by the French, King Louis XV offered the freedom fighters a chance to switch to French nationality and claim nobility. The Bonapartes did just this and became part of the island's aristocracy. Sadly for French nobility, this title became far less flattering 20 years later when heads started to roll in the French Revolution. Over the years that followed, Napoleon conveniently lost the Italian spelling of his name after moving to mainland France, and the rest is history.