PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS "I was born when my country was perishing.

Thirty thousand French vomited upon our coasts, drowning the throne of Liberty in waves of blood, such was the sight which struck my eyes." This passionate utterance, penned by Napoleon Buonaparte at the beginning of the French Revolution, describes the state of Corsica in his natal year.
The words are instinct with the vehemence of the youth and the extravagant sentiment of the age: they strike the keynote of his career.

His life was one of strain and stress from his cradle to his grave.
In his temperament as in the circumstances of his time the young Buonaparte was destined for an extraordinary career.

Into a tottering civilization he burst with all the masterful force of an Alaric.

But he was an Alaric of the south, uniting the untamed strength of his island kindred with the mental powers of his Italian ancestry.