Napoleone di Buonoparte, as he signed himself until manhood, was born in Ajaccio, one of the larger towns on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, just before noon on Tuesday, August 15, 1769. 'She was on her way home from church when she felt labour pains,' he would later say of his mother, Letizia, 'and had only time to get into the house, where I was born, not on a bed, but on a heap of tapestry.' The name his parents chose was unusual but not unknown, appearing in Machiavelli's history of Florence, and, more immediately, being the name of one of his great-uncles.
- From Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts
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