Carlo joined the Corsican independence movement, led by Pasquale Paoli, but when Paoli was forced to flee, Carlo accepted French rule and gained a position as an assessor for the judicial district of Ajaccio. At the time of Napoleon’s birth, Corsica had been ceded to the French by the Genoese. He was the second of eight children born to Carlo Buonaparte, a lawyer descended from Tuscan nobility, and his young wife Maria-Letizia Ramolino. Napoleone Buonaparte was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, on 15 August 1769.
