Joseph Bonaparte, an enlightened ruler

The next May 5th on the various Social Network platforms present in the network, the conversation, organized by the “L’Agorà” Cultural Club and the “Gioacchino and Napoleone” Study Center, called “5 May”, now in its twenty-first edition, will be available. The day of studies on the Napoleonic period, called “5 May”, has reached its twenty-first edition, with the theme “Joseph Bonaparte, an enlightened ruler”.

The event, historically and always organized by the “L’Agorà” Cultural Club and the “Joachim and Napoleon” Study Center, has the merit of analyzing and shining the spotlight on various aspects of the historical period in question. The new meeting, organized by the two Reggio co-associations, recorded the presence of the Tuscan researcher Elena Pierotti and of Gianni AielloPresident of the two organizing associations.

The first topic of the new edition was the one addressed by the welcome guest Elena Pierottion”Joseph Bonaparte, a Mediterranean king”. We actually know little about the eldest brother of the Bonaparte family, Giuseppe. Bonaparte was born in Ajaccio on 7 January 1768 and therefore had Genoese nationality for a year. In fact, only the following year did Corsica pass to France and for this reason Napoleon the Great, born on 15 August 1769, was of French nationality unlike his brother.

Contrary to the customs of the time, the second son Napoleon was started on a military career, while Joseph, due to his good character and aptitude for culture, was started on an ecclesiastical career. At the age of ten, in 1778, he entered the college of Autun, thanks to a scholarship, where he distinguished himself for his commitment to his studies and good results. Subsequently he studied law in Pisa, following the path of his parent Carlo, and in 1788 he became a lawyer in Bastia. Genoa ceded Corsica to France, with a treaty signed at Versailles in 1768, the island was independent, under the leadership of Pasquale Paoli, from 1755.

Genoese officials had proven incapable of keeping the island’s rebellious feelings at bay, and the Doge’s government had repeatedly called for French military intervention to quell revolts by its reluctant subjects. The small Corsican nobility and the bourgeois classes of Ajaccio and Bastia spoke Italian, used Italian for public documents of local administrations and sent their children to study in the schools of Pisa and Livorno. But they would have been equally ungovernable if the island had belonged to the government of Tuscany. There are very beautiful pages on the cultural Italianness of Corsica by Pasquale Paoli, the man who proclaimed the island’s independence and was the darling of many European intellectuals until the French Revolution.

On the basis of the treaty, the Republic of Genoa ceded sovereignty over the island of Corsica to the French king Louis XV, who had already sent his own troops to the same island to support Genoa against the Corsicans in revolt. This occurred in exchange for a subsidy of two million lire, a settlement of debts prior to 1763 and the definitive restitution within three years of the island of Capraia, at that time occupied by the Corsican rebels. According to article 4, Genoa could have asked for the return of the island if it was able to repay the expenses incurred by the King of France for its occupation.

In fact, Genoa, already bankrupt, was absolutely unable to honor its debts, and France would not have allowed the island to be returned. Nonetheless, the definitive decree of reunion of Corsica with France was signed only twenty years later, in 1789, following a double petition presented jointly by the municipality of Bastia and the inhabitants of Ajaccio; until that moment the island was administered on a transitory basis as the “personal patrimony” of the King of France.

Giuseppe was appointed King of Naples by Napoleon Bonaparte on 11 March 1806 and remained here until 1808 when he was replaced in the role by Gioacchino Murat, brother-in-law of Napoleon and of Giuseppe himself. In the period from 1806 to 1808 Giuseppe Bonaparte was the Sovereign of the Kingdom of Naples and his royal mandate began on 30 March. From the end of March, measures followed one another which affected all fields of administration, starting a profound transformation of the state and society.

In the capital, the ministries of General Police, Interior, Finance, Justice, Foreign Affairs and War formed the central organs of the government apparatus. An essential moment of the modernization of the State was the subversion of feudalism, which eliminated privileges and differences between citizens in the judicial and fiscal fields, and made the bourgeoisie the ruling class.

The territory was divided into 14 provinces, each governed by an intendant, who exercised strict control over the municipalities. Appointed king of Spain and the Indies on 7 July 1808, Joseph Bonaparte promulgated a constitution from Baiona on the same day which decreed the end of the ancient regime in Spain. Historiography presents Joseph as a less politically gifted man. Spain, which had always been projected towards the new world, found itself at home with a King who modernized the previous political system as had happened to the Neapolitan reality. It was the turn of Gianni Aiello (President of the “L’Agorà” Cultural Club and of the “Joachim and Napoleon” Study Center, who discussed the topic “The role of the Calabrian Giuseppe Raffaelli in the Kingdom of Naples”. He was born in Catanzaro on 20 February 1750 (or as others report, in 1747) by Francesco, lawyer, and Elisabetta Calabretti.

He completed his studies at the Jesuit college of Catanzaro, where he attended high school courses until 1766. Having completed his humanistic studies, to dedicate himself to legal studies he moved to Naples where it seems he also had the opportunity to follow the lessons of Antonio Genovesi and Ferdinando Galiani; He also combined the study of law with that of anatomy by attending the courses of the doctor Domenico Cotugno. In 1771, in his early twenties, Raffaelli acquired fame in the main forum of the Kingdom of Naples because, in defending a young woman accused of having carried out witchcraft practices, his speech became so famous that it was decided to abolish the crime. of witchcraft.

After the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799, in which he had presided over the State Court, he was forced to exile first in France, then in Turin and Lombardy; here he became professor of public law in Milan, occupying the chair vacated by Cesare Beccaria. Returning to Naples during the French decade, he took part in the drafting of the code of criminal procedure of the Italian Kingdom. From 1808 he was called, together with David Winspeare and Giacinto Dragonetti, to compose the Feudal Commission. In the same year Gioacchino Murat also wanted him to reorganize the Court of Cassation (established on 7 January 1809), of which he was the first general prosecutor, a position he held until 1817.

From 1815 he was also part of the second royal commission responsible for the study of the new Bourbon codes (completed in 1819), contributing, in particular, to the drafting of the criminal code and that of criminal procedure. These are some of the figures that will be the subject of analysis during the twenty-first edition of the study day on the Napoleonic period, called “5 May”, organized by the “L’Agorà” Cultural Club and the “Joachim and Napoleon” Study Center. The conversation, organized by the two Reggio cultural co-associations, will be available on the various Social Network platforms present on the network, starting from Sunday 5th May.