Maria-Letizia Bonaparte

Maria-Letizia Bonaparte (née Ramolino; 24 August 1750 or 1749 – 2 February 1836), known as Letizia Bonaparte, was a Corsican noblewoman and the mother of Napoleon I of France. As the mother of the Emperor, she received the title of "" (French for "Madame Mother"). She married Carlo Buonaparte in 1764 and had eight children, in 1785 after the death of her husband, she moved to mainland France where her son Napoleon would later rise to prominence during the French Revolution. A steadfast source of support for her son, she held a prominent and influential position in French society during the First French Empire and was known for her strong character and influence on her son's life and career. After the end of the Empire, she spent her later years in seclusion in Rome, under the protection of Pope Pius VII; she died in February 1836. Early life Maria-Letizia Ramolino was born in Ajaccio, Corsica (then part of the Republic of Genoa), the daughter of Giovanni Geronimo Ramolino and his wife Angela Maria Pietra-Santa. Giovanni was an army officer with expertise in civil engineering, who commanded the Ajaccio garrison, the Ramolino family was low-ranking nobility from Lombardy established in Corsica 250 years earlier. Letizia was educated at home and trained in nothing but domestic skills, like most Corsican women at the time. After the death of her father, when she was six, her mother married Franz Fesch, a Swiss officer in the Genoese Navy at Ajaccio in 1757. The couple had two children, among them Letizia's half-brother, future Cardinal Joseph Fesch.