Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III BIRTHDAY (AUGUST 15, 1769) The controversy about the date of Napoleon's birth, which was started by Chateaubriand in 1814, and has not even yet quite come to an end, is one of the most strange in all biographical history. For there never was any excuse for it. It was always quite certain, and obvious, that Napoleon had been born on August 15, 1769. There was not even the difficulty that occurred with regard to the birthday of Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, who made his entry into the world a few months before Napoleon, in the night of April 3O-May 1, 1769. In the parish register the birth is entered as having taken place on April 30, whereas it occurred in the early hours of May i. But in Napoleon's case it is asserted—and there are still reputable authorities who think it arguable—that he was born in January of the previous year (1768), and therefore that he was a year and a half older than was generally supposed. That such an idea should ever have been promulgated is a remarkable example of the wrong thinking that passion may produce. To begin with the documentary evidence. A copy from the register book of baptisms for the city of Corte, year 1768, was made on July 19, 1782, by the parish priest of Corte, F. A. Gaffori, and duly certified as correct on July 19, 1782, by Augustin Adriani, who styles himself " conseiller du Roi, juge royal civil,criminal et de police des villes et juridiction de Corte." The copy is headed : " Copie de l'acte de naissance de Nabulione Buonaparte." Then follows the declaration, in Latin, by Franciscus Antonius Gaffori, the parish priest already mentioned, that on January 8, 1768, in the parish church he baptized an infant born on the 7th of the same month of January, to Carlo Bonaparte and Laetitia his wife, of... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.