Did Napoleon Bonaparte and Marie Waleska have offspring?

Answer 1

Mistress to Napoleon The emperor noticed her again at a sumptuous affair given by the Polish nobility. He did not stop seeing her. Twenty-two years old, Marie Walewska, blue-eyed and blond, aroused passions. Patriotic friends of the countess tried to push her into becoming his mistress, which at first she refused to do, but although still married she finally yielded in the hope of inducing the emperor to treat Poland equitably, much as Esther had saved the Jews by influencing King Ahasuerus of Persia.[1] "Her character enchanted the emperor and made him cherish her more every day", relates Louis Constant Wairy. Their affair was passionate. During this time Josephine stayed in Mainz. The idyll was interrupted when Napoleon took command of his army for the Campaign of Eylau. In May 1810 Marie gave Napoleon I a son, Alexandre Walewski, (4th May 1810 - 1868), Foreign Affairs Minister under Napoleon III, later a distinguished French statesman. During the French retreat from Moscow in late 1812, Napoleon could only with difficulty be convinced to refrain from visiting Marie at her country home near Łowicz.[2] After the Battle of Nations and Napoleon's first abdication, Marie and Alexandre made a discreet trip to Elba to comfort the exiled emperor.[3] A rumor wrongly had it that the visit was by Napoleon "fertile" wife Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria and her son, the king of Rome. Alexander Walewski , her first husband´ had died by this time, and in September 1816 she married a second cousin of Napoleon I, Count Philippe Antoine d'Ornano. She died giving birth to her third son in 1817. Her heart was placed in the crypt of the d'Ornano family in Père Lachaise in Paris and her body was brought back to Poland. In 1869, however, her coffin was found to be empty.