Letizia Ramolino


Nob. Maria Letizia Buonaparte, née Ramolino, was an Italian noblewoman, mother of Napoleon I of France.

Life

She was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, Republic of Genoa, the daughter of Nobile Giovanni Geronimo Ramolino, Captain of Corsican Regiments of Chivalry and Infantry in the Army of the Republic of Genoa, and his wife Nobile Angela Maria Pietrasanta. The distant cousins of the Ramolinos were a low rank of nobility in the Republic of Genoa.
Like most such girls in the 18th century, Letizia was educated at home. After the death of her father, her mother remarried the Swiss-born naval officer Franz Fesch, a captain in the service of the Republic of Genoa stationed on Corsica, and gave birth to two children, among them her half-brother Joseph Fesch.

Marriage

On 2/7 June 1764, when she was thirteen, Letizia married the trainee attorney Carlo Buonaparte, himself only eighteen, at Ajaccio. First pregnant a few months later, she went on to give birth to thirteen children, eight of whom survived infancy, and most of whom were created monarchs by Napoleon.
Letizia and her husband Carlo befriended the island's governor, Charles Louis de Marbeuf, and the intendant, Bertrand de Boucheporn, whose wife was the godmother of their son Louis, the future king of Holland. These friendships might have helped to have Napoleon admitted to the Brienne cadet school.
She was described as a harsh mother, and had a very down-to-earth view of most things. When most European mothers bathed children perhaps once a month, she had her children bathed every other day. Letizia spoke Italian and Corsican, and never learned French.
In 1785, when she was 35, her husband died of cancer. In 1793, she left Corsica and resettled with her children in Marseilles in France, where her son Napoleon had a successful military career and eventually took power.
Described as frugal and with simple tastes, she did not approve of her son's marriage to the extravagant Joséphine de Beauharnais in 1796.

Reign of Napoleon

In 1804, her son Napoleon declared himself Emperor. Despite being depicted in the famous painting of the coronation of Napoleon by David, she did not attend her son's coronation. By decree, she was decreed "Madam, the Mother of His Imperial Majesty The Emperor", Imperial Highness, on 18 May 1804 or 23 March 1805. When she was congratulated on her son's ascension to the throne, she replied, "Let's hope that it lasts." Napoleon paid her 25,000 francs a month.
She did not attend the Imperial court and normally lived at the Chateau de Pont-sur-Seine, residing at the Hotel de Brienne on the rare occasions when she did visit Paris.
In 1814, she shared Napoleon's exile in Elba, where he treated her fondly.

Later life

After 1815 she moved to Rome, in Palazzo D'Aste-Bonaparte in piazza Venezia, where she lived out her days with her younger brother Joseph Fesch. During her years in Rome, she rarely saw any other family members than her brother, who rarely left her. For a time the painter Anna Barbara Bansi served as her companion.
She died of old age in 1836, aged 85, three weeks before the 51st anniversary of her husband's death. By then she was nearly blind and had outlived her most famous son Napoleon by 15 years.

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