Josephine's life, but also as regards all Europe, yea, the whole
world, was to be of the highest importance, and who, with the iron
step of fatality, was to walk through Europe to subvert thrones and
raise up new ones; to tread nations in the dust, and to lift up
others from the dust; to break tyranny's chains in which people
languished, so as to impose upon them his own chains.

This boy was Napoleon Bonaparte, the son of the advocate Charles de
Bonaparte.

From Ajaccio, the principal town of Corsica, came the ship which
brought to France the boy, his father, and his two elder brothers.
In Ajaccio the family of the Bonapartes had been settled for more
than a century. There also Napoleon had passed the first years of
his life, in the family circle with his parents, and in joyous
amusements with his five brothers and sisters.

His father, Charles de Bonaparte, belonged to one of the noble
families of Corsica, and was one of the most influential men on the
island. His mother, Letitia Ramolina, was well known throughout the
island for her beauty, and the only woman who could have been her
rival, for she was her equal in beauty, youth, and grace, was her
dearest friend, the beautiful Panonia de Comnene, afterward the
mother of the Duchess d'Abrantes.

The beautiful Letitia Ramolina was married to Charles de Bonaparte
the same year that her friend Panonia de Comnene became the wife of
M. de Permont, a high French official in Ajaccio. Corsica was then
the undisputed property of the kingdom of France, and, however proud
the Corsicans were of their island, yet they were satisfied to be