Napoleon was born on August 15, 1769 in Ajaccio, Corsica, and was given the

name Napoleone Buonaperte. He was the second of eight children of Carlo and

Letizia Buonaperte, both of the Corsican-ltalian gentry. Before Napoleone, no

Buonaparte had ever been a professional soldier. His father Carlo, was a lawyer

who had fought for Corsican independence, but after the French occupied the island

in 1768, he served as a prosecutor and ajudge and entered the French aristocracy

as a count. Through his father's influence, Napoleone was educated at the expense

of King Louis XVI, at Brienne and the Ecole Militaire, in Paris. Napoleone

graduated in 1785, at the age of 16, and joined the artillery as a second lieutenant.

After the revolution began in France, he became a lieutenant colonel (1791) in the

Corsican National Guard. However, when Corsica declared independence in 1793,

Buonaperte, a Republican, and a French patriot, fled to France with his family. He

was assigned, as captain, to an army besieging Toulon, a naval base that was aided

by a British fleet, while in revolt against the republic. It was here that Napoleone

Buonaperte officially changed his name to Napoleon Bonaparte, feeling that it

looked "more French". It was here too that Napoleon replaced a wounded artillery

general, and seized ground where his guns could drive the British fleet from the

harbor, and Toulon fell. As a result of his accomplishments, Bonapatre was

promoted to brigadier general at the age of 24. In 1795, he saved the revolutionary

government by dispersing an insurgent mob in Paris. Then in 1796 he married