in
several journeys and escapes. Her firm and courageous disposition showed
itself at that trying time and throughout the whole of her singularly
varied career. Simple and frugal in her tastes, and devout in thought
and manner of life, she helped to bind her children to the life of
Corsica, while her husband, a schemer by nature and a Voltairian by
conviction, pointed the way to careers in France, the opening up of
which moulded the fortunes of the family and the destinies of Europe. He
died of cancer in the stomach at Montpellier in 1785.

Letizia lived to witness the glory and the downfall of her great son,
surviving Napoleon I. by sixteen years. She never accommodated herself
to the part she was called on to play during the Empire, and, though
endowed with immense wealth and distinguished by the title of _Madame
Mere_, lived mainly in retirement, and in the exercise of a strict
domestic economy which her early privations had made a second nature to
her, but which rendered her very unpopular in France and was displeasing
to Napoleon. After the events of 1814 she joined the emperor in the
island of Elba and was privy to his plans of escape, returning to Paris
during the Hundred Days. After the final downfall of Waterloo, she took
up her residence at Rome, where Pope Pius VII. treated her with great
kindness and consideration, and protected her from the suspicious
attentions of the powers of the Grand Alliance. In 1818 she addressed a
pathetic letter to the powers assembled at the congress of Aix,
petitioning for Napoleon's release, on the ground that his mortal
illness had removed any possibility of his ever again becoming a menace
to the world's peace. The letter remained unanswered, the powers having
reason to believe that it was a mere political move, and that its terms
had been previously concerted with Napoleon. Henceforth, saddened by the
death of Napoleon, of her daughters Pauline and Elisa, and of several
grandchildren, she lived a life of mournful seclusion. In 1829 she was
crippled by a serious fall, and was all but blind before her death in
1836.

For the Bonaparte family in general, and Carlo and Letizia, see
_Storia genealogica della famiglia Bonaparte, della sua origine fina
all' estinzione del ramo gia esisente nella citta di S. Miniato,
scritta da un Samminiatese_ (D. Morali) (Florence, 1846); F. de
Stefani, _Le antichita dei Bonaparte; precede per una introduzione_
(L. Beretta) (Venice,