Marriage and children
On 2 June 1764, at the age of 14, Letizia married Carlo Buonaparte, an 18-year-old law student from Ajaccio. The Buonaparte family, part of the Corsican nobility, traced its origins to Tuscany in the early sixteenth century. Although Carlo began law studies at the University of Pisa, he abandoned them to marry Letizia.
Letizia gave birth to thirteen children, of whom eight survived. Her first son, Napoleon, was born in 1765 but died in infancy. A daughter followed but also did not survive. During this period, Carlo travelled to Rome, where he remained for two years. Upon returning to Corsica, he aligned himself with republican leader Pasquale Paoli, serving as his part-time secretary. Letizia gave birth to Joseph Bonaparte (born Giuseppe) on 7 January 1768.
Later that year, as Genoa formally ceded Corsica to France, Paoli led an armed resistance against the French administration. Letizia and her husband fled into the mountains near Corte with the rebels. While pregnant with her son Napoleon, she accompanied Carlo during the campaign. Paoli was defeated in May 1769, and the couple returned to Ajaccio.
On the Feast of the Assumption, Letizia went into labour while at Mass in Ajaccio Cathedral. According to legend, she gave birth at home on a carpet depicting scenes from the Illiad and Odyssey, though she later denied this detail. The child was named Napoleon after a deceased uncle. As Letizia was unable to nurse him, Camilla Llati was employed as a wet nurse. The family had one servant, Mammuccia Caterina, who lived with them unpaid and assisted at Napoleon's birth. Letizia ran the household while Mammuccia cared for the children.
The couple developed ties with the island's military governor Charles Réné, Comte de Marbeuf and the intendant Claude-François Bertrand de Boucheporn, whose wife became godmother to their son Louis. In 1777, Marbeuf secured Carlo's election as Corsican deputy to Versailles. In 1778, Carlo took Joseph and Napoleon to mainland France for schooling at the Collège d'Autun. The next year, after obtaining a certificate of nobility, Napoleon was admitted on scholarship to the Brienne military academy.
Letizia remained in Ajaccio and bore six more children: Lucien (1775), Elisa (1777), Louis (1778), Pauline (1780), Caroline (1782), and Jérôme (1784). She visited Napoleon at Brienne in 1784, despite restrictions on parental contact. That same year he was accepted into the École militaire in Paris, graduating a year later as second lieutenant of artillery, assigned to Valence.
