Letizia Bonaparte

• 1. Introduction

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  Letizia Bonaparte stood at a cathedral door on the Feast of the Assumption, 1769, in Ajaccio when her labor began. She had spent months fleeing through the mountains of Corsica while pregnant, accompanying her husband as rebels fought French occupation. The child born that day on a rug at home would become Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. But the woman who carried him through a war and raised him in near-poverty is the subject of this documentary. Who was Maria-Letizia Ramolino before her son's name eclipsed hers? How did she survive revolution, exile, and the collapse of an empire? And what did she mean when, upon hearing her son had been crowned Emperor, she replied simply: "Let's hope it lasts"?

• 2. Corsican Roots

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  Maria-Letizia Ramolino was born on the 24th of August 1750 in Ajaccio, at a time when Corsica still belonged to the Republic of Genoa. Her father, Giovanni Geronimo Ramolino, was an army officer specializing in civil engineering who commanded the Ajaccio garrison. Her family, originally from Lombardy, had been rooted on the island for roughly 250 years and held recognition among the Italian nobility.

  Her father died when she was still young. Her mother then remarried in 1757, to Franz Fesch, a Swiss officer serving in the Genoese navy at Ajaccio. That second marriage produced two children, one of whom would become the future Cardinal Joseph Fesch, her half-brother and later a lifelong companion. Letizia's own education followed the customs of the time for Corsican women of her standing: instruction focused on domestic skills, delivered at home rather than in any formal institution.

  On the 2nd of June 1764, fourteen-year-old Letizia married Carlo Buonaparte, an eighteen-year-old law student. Carlo's family traced its origins to Tuscany in the early sixteenth century and was part of the Corsican nobility. He had been studying at the University of Pisa but left those studies to marry her. The Corsica they inhabited was about to change hands, and with it, the Bonaparte family's entire political world.

• 3. Flight and Hardship

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  In May 1769, the rebel leader Pasquale Paoli was defeated by French forces after Genoa formally ceded Corsica to France. Letizia and Carlo had fled into the mountains near Corte with the rebels, and she was pregnant during that campaign. After the defeat, they returned to Ajaccio, and Napoleon was born weeks later in August.

  For the next decade and a half, Letizia managed a growing household with limited means. Carlo pursued political connections, travelling to Rome for two years and later earning election as Corsican deputy to Versailles in 1777 through the influence of the island's military governor, Charles Rene, Comte de Marbeuf. In 1778, he took Joseph and Napoleon to mainland France for schooling at the College d'Autun. The family relied on one unpaid servant, Mammuccia Caterina, who had been present at Napoleon's birth. A wet nurse named Camilla Llati was employed because Letizia could not nurse him herself.

  Carlo Bonaparte died of stomach cancer on the 24th of February 1785, leaving Letizia a widow at thirty-five with eight surviving children. The family's finances deteriorated sharply. Napoleon, then a lieutenant in the Royal Army, returned to Ajaccio in September 1786 and again in early 1788, staying until June to serve as the household's main provider. The eldest son, Joseph, had returned from the College d'Autun to take on responsibility as head of the family. The pressure on Letizia to fund her younger children's upbringing and her older sons' education defined this period entirely.

• 4. Revolution and Ruin

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  By 1793, Napoleon had broken with Pasquale Paoli, and the consequences were immediate and violent. On the 31st of May 1793, Paolist forces looted and burned the Bonaparte family home in Ajaccio. Letizia fled Corsica with her children and the family resettled in Toulon, at the height of the Reign of Terror.

  The danger of being identified as aristocrats was real. To avoid suspicion, Letizia and her daughters were listed as "dressmakers" on passports that Napoleon arranged for them. When the Royal Navy took Toulon shortly after, the family moved again, this time to Marseilles. There, Letizia found herself destitute, relying on soup kitchens and whatever Napoleon could spare from his officer's salary.

  The spring of 1794 brought the first change in their fortunes. Following Napoleon's first major victory at the siege of Toulon, his promotion to general de brigade gave the family some stability. He moved Letizia and her children to the Chateau Sale in Antibes. But her relief at the family's recovery did not extend to approving everything Napoleon did. When he married Josephine de Beauharnais on the 9th of March 1796, he did so without her knowledge or consent, and she disapproved of the match. That disapproval would harden into a lasting tension.

• 5. Madame Mere

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  Napoleon's siblings were granted the style of Imperial Highness as he rose to power, but Letizia initially held no formal title at all. In July 1804, Cardinal Fesch wrote to Napoleon requesting that she be given one. An imperial decree followed: she was named Madame, a designation traditionally reserved for daughters of the king. To clarify her unique standing, the additional phrase "Mother of His Majesty the Emperor" was attached. From that point forward, she was known as Madame Mere.

  On the 2nd of December 1804, Napoleon was crowned Emperor. Letizia did not attend the ceremony. Her absence, however, was quietly corrected in art: she appears seated in a prominent position in Jacques-Louis David's monumental painting of the coronation, a fiction accepted by the historical record. Asked about her son's spectacular ascent, she gave the response that has followed her through history: "Pourvu que ca dure!" Let's hope it lasts.

  On the 19th of December 1804, she left Rome and took up residence at the Hotel de Brienne in Paris, which she purchased from Lucien for 600,000 francs. Napoleon granted her an appanage of 500,000 francs per year. She spent most of the years between 1805 and 1813 at the Chateau de Pont-sur-Seine, a country estate he gave her as a gift. Despite this comfort, she remained at a distance from the Imperial court, living modestly by the standards of her position and backing the son Napoleon had excluded from his circle: Lucien, who had married Alexandrine de Bleschamp against the Emperor's wishes in 1803.

• 6. Exile and Final Years

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  In 1814, Letizia accompanied Napoleon into exile on Elba, and Pauline came too. When he returned to Paris during the Hundred Days in February 1815, Letizia followed. Their final meeting took place at the Chateau de Malmaison on the 29th of June 1815. She then left the capital and travelled to Rome under the protection of Pope Pius VII.

  In Rome, she purchased the former Palazzo Rinuccini, which was later renamed Palazzo Bonaparte, on the corner of Piazza Venezia and Via del Corso. She lived there with her son Joseph, received almost no visitors, and kept the company of Cardinal Fesch, who remained with her throughout her final years. For a time, the painter Anna Barbara Bansi also stayed with her. Letizia had accumulated wealth through careful investment and the sale of jewellery, and she lived on that.

  She died in 1836, aged 85, nearly blind, three weeks before what would have been the 51st anniversary of Carlo's death. She had outlived Napoleon, who died in 1821, by fifteen years. In 1851, her remains were moved to the Imperial Chapel of Ajaccio, which had been built specifically for her. A century later, in 1951, Carlo's remains were transferred there to rest beside her.

• 7. Thirteen Children

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  Letizia gave birth to thirteen children between 1765 and 1784. Five did not survive: her first son, Napoleon, born in August 1765, died in infancy; a daughter born in January 1767 died before her first birthday; a third daughter born in July 1771 died four months later; a stillborn child came in 1773; and another stillborn son in 1779.

  The eight who reached adulthood became, through their brother's rise, kings, queens, princesses, and cardinals. Joseph became King of Naples and then King of Spain. Louis became King of Holland and married Hortense de Beauharnais. Elisa became Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Pauline, Duchess of Guastalla, married twice; her second husband was Prince Camillo Borghese. Caroline became Queen of Naples after marrying Joachim Murat. Jérôme became King of Westphalia and married three times. Lucien, the one who defied Napoleon, was made Prince of Canino and Musignano after marrying Alexandrine de Bleschamp.

  The wife of the intendant Claude-Francois Bertrand de Boucheporn stood as godmother to Louis, a detail that reflects how Letizia cultivated the social ties available to her during the years when her children's futures were still uncertain. Sinead Cusack played Letizia in Ridley Scott's 2023 film Napoleon, the most recent addition to a line of screen portrayals stretching back to Dame May Whitty's depiction in the 1937 film Conquest.