Note 1 — Chapter II
Reading edition
During the period of this pregnancy, Corsica was in the storm of war; and Madame Bonaparte, following her husband, was in the midst of the sufferings, terrors, and brutalities which such a war creates. The air was still electrical with the hot passions of deadly strife when the young wife’s time came. On the 15th of August, 1769, Madame Bonaparte, a devout Catholic, attended service at the church; but feeling labor approaching, hastened home, and was barely able to reach her room before she was delivered of Napoleon on a rug upon the floor.
The authority for this statement is Madame Bonaparte herself, who gave that account of the matter to the Permons in Paris, on the 18th of Brumaire, the day on which the son thus born was struggling for supreme power in France.
The story which represents the greatest of men and warriors as having come into the world upon a piece of carpet, or tapestry, upon which the heroes of the “Iliad” were represented, is a fable, according to the express statement made by Madame Bonaparte to the American General Lee, in Rome, in 1830.