lay in the vigour and sincerity of his statements rather than in cogency of reasoning.
He had four sons. Of these, Victor de Bonald (1780–1871) followed his father in his exile, was rector of the academy of Montpellier after the restoration, but lost his post during the Hundred Days. Regaining it at the second restoration, he resigned finally in 1830. He wrote Des vrais principes opposés aux erreurs du XIX e siècle (1833), Moïse et les géologues modernes (1835), and a life of his father. Louis Jacques Maurice (1787–1870), cardinal (1841), was condemned by the council of state for a pastoral letter attacking Dupin the elder’s Manuel de droit ecclésiastique. In 1848 he held a memorial service “for those who fell gloriously in defence of civil and religious liberty.” In 1851 he nevertheless advocated in the senate the maintenance of the temporal power of Rome by force of arms. Henri (d. 1846) was a contributor to legitimist journals; and René was interim prefect of Aveyron in 1817.
Besides the Théorie above mentioned, the vicomte de Bonald published Essai analytique sur les lois naturelles de l’ordre social (1800); Législation primitive (1802); Du divorce considéré au XIX e siècle (1801); Recherches philosophiques sur les premiers objets de connaissances morales (2 vols., 1818); Mélanges littéraires et politiques, démonstration philosophique du principe constitutif de la société (1819, 1852). The first collected edition appeared in 12 vols., 1817–1819; the latest is that of the Abbé Migne (3 vols., 1859).
See Notice sur M. le Vicomte de Bonald (1841, ed. Avignon, 1853), (by his son Victor); Damiron, Phil. en France au XIX e siècle; Windelband, History of Philosophy (trans. J. H. Tufts, 1893); E. Faguet in Rev. des deux mondes (April 15, 1889).
BONAPARTE, the name of a family made famous by
Napoleon I. (q.v.), emperor of the French. The French form
Bonaparte was not commonly used, even by Napoleon, until
after the spring of 1796. The original name was Buonaparte,
which was borne in the early middle ages by several distinct
families in Italy. One of these, which settled at Florence before
the year 1100, divided in the 13th century into the two branches
of San Miniato and Sarzana. A member of this latter, Francesco
Buonaparte, emigrated in the middle of the 16th century to
Corsica, where his descendants continued to occupy themselves
with the affairs of law and the magistracy.
Carlo Buonaparte [Charles Marie de Bonaparte] (1746–1785), the father of Napoleon I., took his degree in law at the university of Pisa, and after the conquest of Corsica by the French became assessor to the royal court of Ajaccio and the neighbouring districts. His restless Napoleon’s father and mother. and dissatisfied nature led him to press or intrigue for other posts, and to embark in risky business enterprises which compromised the fortune of his family for many years to come. In 1764 he married Letizia Ramolino, a beautiful and high-spirited girl, aged fourteen, descended from a well-connected family domiciled in Corsica since the middle of the 15th century. The first two children, born in 1765 and 1767, died in infancy; Joseph (see below), the first son who survived, was born in 1768, and Napoleon in 1769. The latter was born in the midst of the troubles consequent on the French conquest, Letizia having recently accompanied her husband in several journeys and escapes. Her firm and courageous disposition showed itself at that trying time and throughout the whole of her singularly varied career. Simple and frugal in her tastes, and devout in thought and manner of life, she helped to bind her children to the life of Corsica, while her husband, a schemer by nature and a Voltairian by conviction, pointed the way to careers in France, the opening up of which moulded the fortunes of the family and the destinies of Europe. He died of cancer in the stomach at Montpellier in 1785.
Letizia lived to witness the glory and the downfall of her great son, surviving Napoleon I. by sixteen years. She never accommodated herself to the part she was called on to play during the Empire, and, though endowed with immense wealth and distinguished by the title of Madame Mère, lived mainly in retirement, and in the exercise of a strict domestic economy which her early privations had made a second nature to her, but which rendered her very unpopular in France and was displeasing to Napoleon. After the events of 1814 she joined the emperor in the island of Elba and was privy to his plans of escape, returning to Paris during the Hundred Days. After the final downfall of Waterloo, she took up her residence at Rome, where Pope Pius VII. treated her with great kindness and consideration, and protected her from the suspicious attentions of the powers of the Grand Alliance. In 1818 she addressed a pathetic letter to the powers assembled at the congress of Aix, petitioning for Napoleon’s release, on the ground that his mortal illness had removed any possibility of his ever again becoming a menace to the world’s peace. The letter remained unanswered, the powers having reason to believe that it was a mere political move, and that its terms had been previously concerted with Napoleon. Henceforth, saddened by the death of Napoleon, of her daughters Pauline and Elisa, and of several grandchildren, she lived a life of mournful seclusion. In 1829 she was crippled by a serious fall, and was all but blind before her death in 1836.
For the Bonaparte family in general, and Carlo and Letizia, see Storia genealogica della famiglia Bonaparte, della sua origine fino all’ estinzione del ramo già esisente nella città di S. Miniato, scritta da un Samminiatese (D. Morali) (Florence, 1846); F. de Stefani, Le antichità dei Bonaparte; precede per una introduzione (L. Beretta) (Venice, 1857); L. Ambrosini and A. Huard, La Famille impériale. Hist. de la famille Bonaparte depuis son origine jusqu’en 1860 (Paris, 1860); C. Leynadier, Histoire de la famille Bonaparte de l’an 1050 à l’an 1848 (continuée jusqu’en 1866 par de la Brugère) (Paris, 1866); A. Kleinschmidt, Die Eltern und Geschwister Napoleons I. (Berlin, 1876); D. A. Bingham, The Marriages of the Bonapartes (2 vols., London, 1881); F. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille (4 vols., Paris, 1897–1900); A. Chuquet, La Jeunesse de Napoléon (3 vols., Paris, 1897–1899); T. Nasica, Mémoires sur l’enfance et la jeunesse de Napoléon jusqu’à la âge vingt-trois ans; précédes d’une notice historique sur son père; Baron H. Larrey, Madame Mère (2 vols., Paris, 1892); Clara Tschudi, Napoleons Mutter: aus dem Norwegischen übersetzt von H. von Lenk (Leipzig, 1901).
The brothers and sisters of Napoleon I., taken in order of age, are the following:—
I. Joseph (1768–1844), was born at Corte in Corsica, on the
7th of January 1768. He was educated at the college at Autun
in France, returned to Corsica in 1784, shortly after
the death of his father, and thereafter studied law at
the university of Pisa. He became a barrister at
Napoleon’s brothers and sisters:
1. Joseph Bonaparte.
Bastia in June 1788, and was soon elected a councillor
of the municipality of Ajaccio. Like his brothers,
Napoleon and Lucien, he embraced the French or
democratic side, and on the victory of the Paolist party
fled with his family from Corsica and sought refuge in France.
After spending a short time in Paris, where he was disgusted
with the excesses of the Jacobins, he settled at Marseilles and
married Mlle Julie Clary, daughter of a merchant of that town.
The Bonapartes moved from place to place, mainly with the view
of concerting measures for the recovery of Corsica. Joseph
took part in these efforts and went on a mission to Genoa in
1795. In 1796 he accompanied his brother Napoleon in the
early part of the Italian campaign, and had some part in the
negotiations with Sardinia which led to the armistice of Cherasco
(April 28), the news of which he bore to the French government.
Later he proceeded to Leghorn, took part in the French
expedition for the recovery of Corsica, and, along with the
commissioner of the French Republic, Miot de Melito, helped
in the reorganization of that island. In March 1797 he was
appointed by the Directory, minister to the court of Parma, and
early in the summer he proceeded to Rome in the same capacity.
Discords arose between the Vatican and the French Republic,
and it is clear that Napoleon and the French Directory ordered
Joseph to encourage revolutionary movements in Rome. On
the 28th of December 1797 a disturbance took place opposite
the French embassy, which led to the death of the French
general, Léonard Duphot. Joseph at once left Rome, which
soon became a republic. Repairing to Paris, he entered on
parliamentary life, becoming one of the members for Corsica
in the Council of Five Hundred. He made no mark in the
chamber and retired in 1799.
Before the coup d’état of Brumaire he helped Napoleon in making overtures to Sieyès and Moreau, but otherwise did little. Thereafter he refused to enter the ministry, but became a member
