It is rather funny therefore to think about him serving in the French army he was hoping to defeat.” He has a similar backstory to other dictators Princeton professor of history David Bell remarks, “His great ambition until 1793 was to bring Corsica independence from France. At just nine-years-old, Napoleon left home for a military school, where he was bullied. In the process, he secured school places for his eldest sons Joseph and Napoleone at prestigious schools on the mainland.
In order to feed his wife and eight children, Napoleone’s father Carlo set aside his anti-French sentiment to work with the occupiers. He served for the army he wanted to overthrow Young Napoleone detested the French and everything they stood for as an angry 20-year-old penning that he was born “as the fatherland was dying”. Although his family had minor aristocratic roots, life was tough for the Buonapartes on an island where they were forced to cede to their new masters.
