A title for Letizia Bonaparte

[LouisFerdinand]

Napoleon I was Emperor of the French.     
His brothers and sisters had been given grand titles.     
Napoleon proposed that his mother Letizia should be known officially as Son Altesse Madame, Mère de Sa Majesté l'Empereur.   
She became generally known thereafter as Madame Mère.

[LouisFerdinand]

Advised by her doctors to do so, Letizia went out on most days for a drive. Attention was drawn to her carriage by the brightly painted coat-of-arms on its doors.

[LouisFerdinand]

Napoleon had thought it as well not to inform his mother of his marriage to the widow Beauharnais until after it had taken place. Letizia did not approve of the marriage or of Josephine.

[LouisFerdinand]

Madame Mere took pleasure in listening to extracts from books and plays about Napoleon. She enjoyed Napoleon Bonaparte, a play by Alexandre Dumas.

[LouisFerdinand]

When Napoleon I was exiled, his mother Madame Letizia wrote to her son on St. Helena, offering to go there to live with him. As well as letters she sent money.

[LouisFerdinand]

In 1804 Cardinal Fesh presented Napoleon I's mother Letizia Bonaparte to the Pope at the Quirinal, together with her daughter Pauline.