peashooter85:Napoleon Bonaparte was an Italian who wanted to join the British Navy,Indeed one of the
peashooter85:Napoleon Bonaparte was an Italian who wanted to join the British Navy,Indeed one of the lesser known facts about the great French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. For those who are not well knowledgeable in history, Napoleon Bonaparte was a French general who in the early 1800’s ascended to the rank of Emperor of France after the French Revolution and conquered most of Europe until his downfall at the hands of the European Allies.However, like how Hitler was not German, and Stalin was not Russian, Napoleon was not French> He was in fact Italian. He was a native Italian speaker, raised in an Italian family, and given an Italian name. Birthed to a family of Tuscan nobles, he was born Napoleone di Buonaparte (Nah-pole-lee-own-nah Dee Boo-own-nah-part-ta) in 1769 in the town of Ajaccio, Corsica. His father, Carlo Maria Di Buonaparte was an attorney, and his mother was Maria Letizia Ramolino. So how did this happen? After all if you look at a map, Corsica is clearly a province of France. Right?Originally Corsica was a part of Italy, with Italian culture and language. In ancient times the island was a province of the Roman Republic and Empire. After the fall of the Roman Empire the Island became a part of the Kingdom of Genoa, one of the most powerful city states in Italy. However in 1755, after fighting a 20 year war for independence, Corsica became an independent republic within the Kingdom of Genoa. While proud and fiercely independent, the Corsicans hard won sovereignty would not last long. Against the might of the Kingdom of France, the small republic stood little chance and was actually leased by Genoa to France in 1769. To Napoleone’s father, the occupation of Corsica by France was an opportunity for his son to be more than a minor noble on a small Mediterranean Island. In 1779, at the age of ten, Napoleone was sent to mainland France to learn to speak French at a religious school in Autun. It was at this time that Napoleone di Buonaparte changed his name to the more French sounding “Napoleon Bonaparte”. He was later enrolled in a military school at Brienne as well. Throughout his life as a student he was often teased for his heavy Corsican accent, poor grammar, and poor spelling skills resulting from the difficulty of transitioning from Italian to French, a trait he would have the rest of his life, which often separated him from his French colleagues. However, he was exceptionally talented in the field of Mathematics, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Navigation. With these skills, young Bonaparte, the sworn enemy of Great Britain in the later Napoleonic Wars and one of the greatest generals in history, actually applied for an officer’s commission in the British Navy. Being born on a small island, Napoleon longed for a successful and long naval career. To his disappointment the British Navy rejected him. However, his skills of mathematical calculation did not go unnoticed, and he was invited to attend the Military Academy of Paris to study artillery. In 1785 he graduated as an artillery officer in the French Army with the rank of second lieutenant. He was only 15 years old. The rest is history.Imagine how would history be different if he had been accepted into the British Navy. -- source link