pretensions of princely origin on these insufficient proofs,
Napoleon himself was little impressed by them. He was disposed to
declare that his ancestry began in his own person, either at Toulon or
from the eighteenth of Brumaire. Whatever the origin of the Corsican
Buonapartes, it was neither royal from the twin brother of Louis XIV,
thought to be the Iron Mask; nor imperial from the Julian gens, nor
Greek, nor Saracen, nor, in short, anything which later-invented and
lying genealogies declared it to be. But it was almost certainly
Italian, and probably patrician, for in 1780 a Tuscan gentleman of the
name devised a scanty estate to his distant Corsican kinsman. The
earliest home of the family was Florence; later they removed for
political reasons to Sarzana, in Tuscany, where for generations men of
that name exercised the profession of advocate. The line was
extinguished in 1799 by the death of Philip Buonaparte, a canon and a
man of means, who, although he had recognized his kin in Corsica to
the extent of interchanging hospitalities, nevertheless devised his
estate to a relative named Buonacorsi.

The Corsican branch were persons of some local consequence in their
latest seats, partly because of their Italian connections, partly in
their substantial possessions of land, and partly through the official
positions which they held in the city of Ajaccio. Their sympathies as
lowlanders and townspeople were with the country of their origin and
with Genoa. During the last years of the sixteenth century that
republic authorized a Jerome, then head of the family, to prefix the
distinguishing particle "di" to his name; but the Italian custom was
averse to its use, which was not revived until later, and then only
for a short time. Nine generations are recorded as having lived on
Corsican soil within two centuries and a quarter. They were evidently
men of consideration, for they intermarried with the best families of
the island; Ornano, Costa, Bozzi, and Colonna are names occurring in
their family records.

Nearly two centuries passed before the grand duke of Tuscany issued
formal patents in 1757, attesting the Buonaparte nobility. It was
Joseph, the grandsire of Napoleon, who received them. Soon afterward
he announced that the coat-armor of the family was "_la couronne de
compte, l'ecusson fendu par deux barres et deux etoilles, avec les
lettres B. P. qui signifient Buona Parte, le fond des armes
rougeatres, les barres et le