Ajaccio and Napoleon

We are anchored out in a large bay that surrounds the capitol city of Corsica. It is a big modern city with not much remaining of it’s historical history. Most of that history centers around this being the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is a history that the town people are clearly proud of, though it is not always been so. Napoleon’s parents came here when his mother was very pregnant with her famous son. His father came to work in government, partly to ensure that his children would gain a solid education. And as was the custom, young Napoleon was shipped off to military school in Paris at the tender young age of nine. Yeah nine. By the time Napoleon was 16 he was appointed a lieutenant. When the French revoluton began, Napoleon’s father choose the wrong side, and when the revolutionaries won, their home was ransacked and the family was hounded from their home their fortune and good name destroyed. Napoleon brought them to Toulon for safety. Napoleon gained power and influence and from that time on, marched across Europe and into the history books. He only visited Corsica one more time during a journey from Egypt. Though Napoleon commissioned numerous statues of himself in countless places, he never commissioned one in his home town. While there are numerous statues of him scattered throughout the city, they were all put there after his death and after his history was firmly decided upon. A sort of god-like cult developed after his death. People would make prilgrimages to his home and take what they could. They even peeled of scraps of wallpaper to sav as a remberance of this god-king until nothing was left of his childhood home. Of course, that has all been restored and furnished to become a museum to honor this favored hometown hero.