Carlo Maria Buonaparte (27 March 1746-24 February 1785) was a Corsican attorney and the father of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Biography[]
Carlo Maria Buonaparte was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, Republic of Genoa in 1746, the son of politician Giuseppe Maria Buonaparte and a scion of a Tuscan family with origins in 13th-century Florence. He practiced law, and he married Maria Letizia Ramolino in 1764. He worked as Pasquale Paoli's secretary and personal assistant, serving on a diplomatic mission to Pope Clement XIII in Rome in 1766. He returned in 1768 after having an affair with a married woman, and he participated in Paoli's rebellion against the Genoese. He later embraced the French government of Corsica, and he became an advocate of the Superior Council of Corsica in 1769 and a procurator of the King of France in 1770. He was ennobled in 1769, and he served as a deputy to the General States of Corsica in 1771, a member of the Council of the Twelve Nobles of Dila in 1772, and Corsica's representative to King Louis XVI at Versailles in 1778. However, he squandered his finances on risky business enterprises, and he died of stomach cancer in 1785, leaving his surviving wife and eight children (Joseph, Napoleon, Lucien, Elisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline, and Jerome) penniless.