Elisa Bonaparte Part I

Elisa was the oldest of the 3 Bonaparte sisters, and the plainest. She was born in Corsica in 1777, a few years after Napoleon. . When the family moved to France, she secured a place in a school founded by Madame de Maintenon, the morganatic wife of Louis XIV. The school was for girls of good birth but who did not have much money, to educate them to become wives and mothers. Elisa was interested in learning and the arts, and did well at school. In 1797, she married Felix Bachiocchi, a soldier who was quiet and who became a little hen pecked. Napoleon did not think that her new husband was ambitious or successful enough but Elisa was less pretty than her 2 younger sisters and he wanted to see her married and settled. She was close to her brother Lucien who was the most left wing of the family and she and he ran a salon for literary and intellectual conversation. When Lucien's first wife died Elisa took on the care of his 2 orphaned daughters. She herself had 4 children, a son Napoleon and a daughter Napoleone, survived to adulthood but the other two died young. She was given a small domain in Italy to rule....Lucca and Piombino, and was a reasonably successful ruler though the locals resented being ruled over by a French princess. She organised charities and tried to reform agriculture and had disputes with her brother who treated his satellite states as simply there to assist France. End Part I