Lucien Bonaparte

Lucien Bonaparte, painted by François-Xavier Fabre, after 1800.

Lucien Bonaparte.

Lucien Bonaparte, Prince Français, 1st Prince of Canino and 1st Prince of Musignano (born Luciano Buonaparte; (May 21, 1775 – June 29, 1840) was the third surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and his wife Letizia Ramolino.

Lucien was a younger brother of Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte, and an older brother of Elisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline and Jérôme Bonaparte. Lucien held genuinely revolutionary views, which led to an often abrasive relationship with his brother Napoleon, who seized control of the French government in 1799, when Lucien was 24.

Revolutionary activities

Born in Ajaccio, Corsica, and educated in mainland France, Lucien returned to Corsica at the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and became an outspoken speaker in the Jacobin Club at Ajaccio, where he renamed himself "Brutus". An ally of Maximilien Robespierre during the Reign of Terror, he was briefly imprisoned (at Aix-en-Provence) after the coup of 9 Thermidor.

As president of the Council of Five Hundred — which he removed to the suburban security of Saint-Cloud — Lucien Bonaparte's combination of bravado and disinformation was crucial to the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire (date based on the French Revolutionary Calendar) in which General Bonaparte overthrew the government of the Directory to replace it by the Consulate. Lucien mounted a horse and galvanized the grenadiers by pointing a sword at his brother and swearing to run him through if he ever betrayed the principles of Liberté, égalité, fraternité. The following day Lucien arranged for Napoleon's formal election as First Consul.

Napoleon made him Minister of the Interior under the Consulate, which enabled Lucien to falsify the results of the plebiscite but which brought him into competition with Joseph Fouché the chief of police, who showed Napoleon a subversive pamphlet that was probably written by Lucien, and effected a breach between the brothers. Lucien was sent as ambassador to the court of Charles IV of Spain, (November, 1800), where his diplomatic talents won over the Bourbon royal family and, perhaps as importantly, the minister Manuel de Godoy.

Though he was a member of the Tribunat in 1802 and was made a senator of the First French Empire, Lucien came to oppose many of Napoleon's imperial ideas, particularly the marriage of convenience planned for him. In 1804, spurning imperial honors, he went into self-imposed exile, living initially in Rome, where he bought the Villa Rufinella in Frascati. On August 18, 1814 he was made Prince of Canino by Pope Pius VII and Prince of Musignano on March 21, 1824 by Pope Leo XII.

Later years

French Monarchy -
Bonaparte Dynasty

Napoleon I Children    Napoleon II Siblings    Napoleone    Maria Anna    Joseph, King of Spain    Lucien, Prince of Canino    Elisa, Grand Duchess of Tuscany    Louis, King of Holland    Pauline, Princess of Guastalla    Caroline, Queen of Naples    Jérôme, King of Westphalia Nephews and nieces    Princess Julie    Princess Zénaïde    Princess Charlotte    Prince Charles    Prince Louis    Prince Pierre    Prince Napoleon Charles    Prince Napoleon Louis    Napoleon III    Prince Jérôme    Prince Napoleon Joseph    Princess Mathilde Grandnephews and -nieces    Prince Joseph    Prince Lucien-Louis    Prince Roland    Princess Jeanne    Prince Charles    Prince Jerome    Napoleon (V) Victor Great Grandnephews and -nieces    Princess Marie    Princess Marie Clotilde    Napoleon (VI) Louis Great Great Grandnephews and -nieces    Napoleon (VII) Charles    Princess Catherine    Princess Laure    Prince Jerome Great Great Great Grandnephews and -nieces    Princess Caroline    Prince Jean-Christophe Napoleon II Napoleon III Children    Napoleon (IV), Prince Imperial

With the pope a prisoner of Napoleon in 1809, Lucien was sailing for the United States, when he was captured instead by the British. He spent the years 1810 to 1814 under house arrest in Great Britain, which nevertheless allowed him to settle comfortably in the English countryside, where he was working on a heroic poem on the subject of Charlemagne. Angered by what he considered treasonous behavior by his brother, Napoleon had Lucien omitted from the Imperial almanacs listing the Bonapartes from 1811 onward. Lucien returned to France following his brother's abdication in April 1814.

In the Hundred Days after Napoleon's return from exile at Elba, Lucien rallied to the imperial cause. His brother made him a French Prince and included his children into the Imperial Family, this was however not recognized by the Bourbons after Waterloo and Napoleon's second abdication. Subsequently Lucien was proscribed at the Restoration and deprived of his fauteuil at the Académie française. In 1836 he wrote his Mémoires. He died in Viterbo, Italy, on June 29, 1840, of stomach cancer, as did his father, his sister Pauline and - according to the official report - Napoleon as well.

Academic activities

Lucien Bonaparte was the inspiration behind the Napoleonic reconstitution of the dispersed Académie française in 1803, where he took a seat. He collected paintings in his maison de campagne at Brienne, was a member of Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Récamier's salon and wrote a novel, La Tribu indienne.

Marriages and children

His first wife was his landlord's daughter, Christine Boyer, the illiterate sister of an innkeeper, and by her he had four children, one of whom was stillborn. His second wife was Alexandrine de Bleschamp, widow of Hippolyte Jouberthon, known as "Madame Jouberthon", and by her he had nine children, including:

• Charles Lucien Bonaparte (1803–1857), the naturalist and ornithologist.
• Louis Lucien Bonaparte (1813–1891).
• Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte (1815–1881).

External links

• Académie Francaise: Les Immortels: (in French)
• Lucien Bonaparte

Donate to Wikimedia