Napoleon's childhood and early life were often described as full of anxiety, but his first nine years at Ajaccio passed simply and happily, surrounded by family, friends, and a few servants.
However, the familiar, still-known image of a frail, withdrawn child hardly matches his family nickname, "Rabulione" or troublemaker.
Napoleon's early years were largely unknown due to the lack of trustworthy sources, although there was no doubt that he was an avid reader who was interested in history and famous person biographies from a young age.
Napoleon's mother, Letizia Ramolino, once remarked to a minister of the government that her son "never joined the games of children his age; he was always careful to stay away from them and find himself a small room on the third floor of the house, where he stayed and rarely came down, even to eat with his family.
"Up there, he read non-stop, especially history books." Napoleon claimed that when he was nine years old for the first time, he read Jean-Jacques Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse (The New Héloïse), an 800-page novel about love and sacrifice, and said: "It changed my mind. my brain."
His brother Joseph Bonaparte subsequently reflected, "I had no doubt that early reading had had a tremendous impact on his habits and temperament."
The sibling recounted how Napoleon insisted on switching places with his brother and refused to support the losing side of Carthage when children were asked to sit beneath the Roman or Carthaginian flags in primary school. Napoleon has always had a stronger will (despite the fact that he is 18 months younger than Joseph).
Napoleon frequently ordered his senior officers to "study the campaigns of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Emperor Eugene, and Frederick the Great over and over again" in his final years.
Only by doing this can one become a great general. He drew quotes from ancient history, which served as an encyclopedia of military and political strategies, from which he would apply them throughout his life.
This influence affected him so deeply that he would occasionally hide his hands in his coat when posing for photographs, mimicking the Romans who wore togas.
Napoleon's mother tongue was Corsican, a local dialect quite similar to Genoese.
At school, he learned to read and write in Italian. When he was approximately ten years old, he began learning French, which he always spoke with a strong Corsican accent, using the letter "ou" instead of the letters "eu" or "u," which made him get teased in the military and at school.
It was previously deemed "unbelievably that a man of his position" would speak with such a strong accent by architect Pierre Fontaine, who adorned and renovated many of Napoleon's accents.
Napoleon had no trouble pretending to be someone else despite his poor command of the French language and pronunciation, which was of little consequence even in the days when pronunciation standards helped others understand what he said.
Napoleon's childhood and early life were often described as full of anxiety, but his first nine years at Ajaccio passed simply and happily, surrounded by family, friends, and a few servants.
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