His name was Napoleon Bonaparte.

His birthplace, the island of Corsica, had only two months before been incorporated with France.

The fates even then were watching over this child of destiny, who might, by a slight turn of events then imminent, have been born a subject of Spain, or Germany, or of George III.

of England.
The impoverished Republic of Genoa was in desperate need of money.

The island could be had by the highest bidder, and in 1768 it was purchased by France, just in time to make the great Corsican a French citizen.
Indeed, all the performers in the approaching drama were assembled.
Three young princes, grandsons of Louis XV., who were to be successively upon the throne of France, were at Versailles: Louis the Dauphin, now twenty, and his Austrian bride, Marie Antoinette, and his two brothers, afterward successively Louis XVIII.