The Emperor asked me whether the work had been used in all our systems of education; adding, that had it been better known to him, all the schools and lyceums should have been furnished with it. He further asked, why I had published it under the borrowed name of Le Sage? I replied that a very imperfect sketch had been published in England, just after my emigration, at a time when we could not acknowledge our names as emigrants abroad, without danger to our relations in France; “and, perhaps,” said I, laughing, “I was not then cured of the prejudices of my youth; like the nobles of Bretagne, who deposited their swords with the registrar of the Civil Court, while engaged in trade, that they might not derogate from their family dignity.”
As already observed, the Emperor always rose from table long before the rest of the company: the Grand Marshal and I always followed him to the quarter-deck, where I was frequently left alone with him; as General Bertrand had often to attend his wife, who suffered excessively from sea-sickness.
After the preliminary remarks on the weather, the ship’s progress, and the winds, Napoleon used to start a subject of conversation, or revive that of the preceding or some other former, day; and when he had taken eight or nine turns the whole length of the deck, he would seat himself on the second gun from the gangway on the larboard side. The midshipmen soon observed this habitual predilection, so that the cannon was thenceforth called the Emperor’s gun.
It was there that Napoleon often conversed for hours together, and that I learned for the first time a part of what I am about to relate: in doing which, I wish to observe that I shall at the same time add whatever I collected in a variety of subsequent conversations; thus presenting at one view, all that I have heard worth noting on the subject.
The name of Bonaparte may be spelt either Bonaparte or Buonaparte; as all Italians know. Napoleon’s father always introduced the u; and his uncle, the Archdeacon Lucien (who survived Napoleon’s father and was a parent to Napoleon and his brothers), at the same time, and under the same roof, wrote it Bonaparte. During his youth, Napoleon followed the example of his father. On attaining the command of the Army of Italy he took good care not to alter the orthography, which agreed with the spirit of the language; but at a later period, and when amongst the French, he wished to adopt their orthography, and thenceforth wrote his name Bonaparte.
This family for many years made a distinguished figure in the Bolognese territory: it was very powerful at Treviso; and is to be found inscribed in the Golden book of Bologna, as also amongst the patricians of Florence. When Napoleon, as General in chief of the army of Italy, entered Treviso, at the head of his victorious army, the principal inhabitants came to meet him, bringing title deeds and records, which proved that his family had once been one of the most eminent in their city.
At the interview of Dresden, before the Russian campaign, the Emperor Francis one day told Napoleon, then his son-in-law, that his family had governed as sovereigns at Treviso: a fact of which there could be no doubt, as Francis had caused all the documents proving it to be drawn up and presented to him. Napoleon replied, with a smile, that he did not wish to know anything about it, and that he preferred being the Rodolph of Hapsburgh of his own family. Francis attached much more importance to the matter: he said that it was of very little consequence to have fallen from wealth to poverty; but that it was above all price to have been of sovereign rank, and that the fact must be communicated to Maria Louisa, to whom it would afford infinite pleasure.
When, during the campaign of Italy, Napoleon entered Bologna, Marescalchi, Caprara, and Aldini, since so well known in France, and at that time deputies in the senate of their native city, came of their own accord to present the golden book, in which the name and arms of his ancestors were inscribed.
There are several houses at Florence which attest the former existence of the Buonaparte family there; many houses are even still seen bearing the escutcheons of the family.
Cesari, a Corsican or Bolognese, residing in London, who was shocked at the manner in which the British Government had received Napoleon's pacific letter on assuming the Consulate, published a genealogical notice, wherein he established the Emperor’s alliance with the ancient house of Este, Welf, or Guelf, supposed to be the parent stem of the present royal family of England.10
The Duke de Feltre, French ambassador in Tuscany, brought to Paris, from the Gallery de Medici, the portrait of a Buonaparte who had married a princess of the Grand Duke’s family. The mother of Pope Nicholas V. or Paul V., of Sarzana, was also a Buonaparte.
It was a Buonaparte who negotiated the treaty by which Leghorn was exchanged for Sarzana. It is to a Buonaparte that we are indebted for one of the oldest comedies written at the period of the revival of letters intitled The Widow. It may still be seen in the Royal Library at Paris.11
When Napoleon marched against Rome at the head of the French army, and received the propositions of the Pope at Tolentino, one of the negotiators of the enemy observed that he was the only Frenchman who had marched against Rome since the Constable de Bourbon; but what rendered this circumstance still more singular was that the history of the first expedition was written by an ancestor of him who executed the second, that is to say, Signor Niccolo Buonaparte, who has in reality left us a work, called The Sacking of Rome by the Constable de Bourbon.12
Hence, perhaps, or from the Pope mentioned above, the name of Niccolo, which the writers of certain pamphlets pretended to be that of the Emperor, instead of Napoleon. This work is to be found in most libraries; it is preceded by a history of the house of Buonaparte, printed about forty or fifty years ago, and edited by Dr. Vaccha, a professor of Pisa.
M. de Cetto, ambassador of Bavaria, has often told me that the archives of Munich contained a great number of documents, in Italian, which proved the antiquity and importance of the Buonaparte family.
During the continuance of his power, Napoleon always refused to take any pains, or even to enter into conversation, on the subject. The first attempt to turn his attention to this matter occurred in the time of his Consulate, and was so much discouraged that no one ever sought to renew the discussion. Some person published a genealogy, in which he contrived to connect the family of Napoleon with certain northern kings. Napoleon caused this specimen of flattery to be ridiculed in the public papers in which the writers concluded by observing that the nobility of the First Consul only dated from Montenotte, or from the 18th of Brumaire.
This family suffered, like many others, from the numerous revolutions which desolated the cities of Italy. The troubles of Florence placed the Buonapartes amongst the fuorusciti, or emigrants. One of the family retired to Sarzana in the first instance, and thence went to Corsica, from which island his descendants always continued to send their children to Tuscany, where they were educated under the care of the branch that remained at San Miniato. The second sons of this branch had borne the name of Napoleon for several generations, which was derived from an ancestor thus named, celebrated in the annals of Italy.
When on his way to Florence, after the expedition to Leghorn, Napoleon slept at the house of an old Abbé Buonaparte, at San Miniato, who treated the whole of his staff with great magnificence. Having exhausted all the family recollections, the Abbé told