In October 1784 he began attending the Ecole Militaire in Paris. In April 1779 Napoleon entered the military school at Brienne. Napoleon's father Carlo made a precarious living as a lawyer, while establishing connections with the new French rulers of Corsica, allowing him to send his children to be educated in France.
The Bonaparte family had their claim to noble status confirmed by the French, but they were not a particularly wealthy family. The moment was a crucial one in the history of his native island, for just before Napoleon's birth Genoa ceded Corsica to France, thus, Napoleon was born a subject of the French king, Louis XV. Napoleon Bonaparte was born on 15 August 1769 in Ajaccio, the capital of Corsica, as the second of the eight children of Carlo Bonaparte and Maria Letizia Bonaparte.
