The House of Bonaparte
The Moniteur in 1862 contained five columns on the pedigree of Bonaparte, from Anno Domini 1170, when the first of that name headed an Italian league at Treviso against the German invaders under Frederic Barbarossa. John Bonaparte signs a treaty at Constance on behalf of Italy, and writes himself consul, being in fact le premier consul of his race, in 1182. Two centuries after the Bonaparte escutcheon on their house in St. Andrew’s-square, at Treviso, is ordered to be broken by Venice; and 440 years afterwards that republic is suppressed by a Bonaparte at the treaty of Campo Formio. Details are given of the family’s removal to Florence, San Miniato, and Corsica; of the sack of Rome, at which Jacopo Bonaparte assisted in 1520, and of a comedy, La Vedova, from the pen of another about the same period. Muratori’s Antiquitates Italicæ, vols. 8, 9, and 12, folio, contain numerous diplomatic documents signed by members of this stirring house, ever active in all the revolutions of mediæval Italy. The Moniteur becomes quite an enthusiast about the land that produced this chosen race. The oddest revelation is the fact, that Mala-parte was the original name before 1170, just as it was of the Bolognese family Malatesta, the change having been voted by popular acclaim in public assembly at Treviso. So far the Moniteur. But it might be added that the Beauharnais family, through which the present Emperor comes, had undergone a precisely similar change of name at the request of Marie Antoinette. That house had been known for ages in Poitou as Seigneurs de Bellescouilles, an appellation not quite fitting the Court at Versailles, and altered accordingly. It is rather remarkable that Napoleon I., in the Moniteur of 22nd Messidor, an XIII., 1805, had scouted all idea of ancestry, and ordered a formal declaration to be inserted that his house dated from Marengo, quoting the lines of La Fontaine—“Rien n’est dangereux qu’un sot ami,” meaning the person who had drawn out his pedigree.
The Register of the Imperial family is a large folio volume, bound in red velvet, and having at the corners ornaments of silver-gilt, with the family cipher ‘N’ in the centre. It was commenced in 1806, and the first entry made was the adoption of Prince Eugène by the Emperor. The second, made the same year, relates to the adoption of the Princess Stephanie de Beauharnais, who died Grand Duchess of Baden, and who was cousin of the Empress Joséphine. Next comes the marriage of the Emperor Napoleon I.; then several certificates of the birth of Princes of the family, and lastly of the King of Rome, which closes the series of the certificates inscribed under the reign of the First Emperor. This register was confided to the care of Count Regnault de Saint-Jean-d’Angely, Minister and Councillor of State, and Secretary of the Imperial family. It was to him, under the First Empire, as it is now to the Minister of State under the Second, that was reserved the duty of drawing up the procès verbaux of the great acts relative to Napoleon. At the fall of the First Empire, Count Regnault de Saint-Jean-d’Angely carefully preserved the book, which at his death passed into the hands of the Countess, his widow. That lady handed it over to the President of the Republic when Louis Napoleon was called by universal suffrage to the Imperial throne.
A Correspondent of the Literary Gazette writes: “I have been afforded an opportunity of examining many of the letters of Napoleon which figure in the Imperial collection; and I assure you that the commission charged with the duty of saying what should and what should not be published, had a most arduous task to perform. For of all the ‘cramped pieces of penmanship’ that were ever seen his are the most cramped and unintelligible. The manner in which the letters are formed would frighten a writing-master into fits, and the lines never run straight, whilst not unfrequently they come into collision. And what is singular is that a great many of the words are grossly misspelt, and that others are only half-written. O vanity of human genius! O triumph for dull little schoolboys! The man who conquered more kingdoms than Alexander knew not orthography!”