Charles Bonaparte

Carlo Maria Buonaparte (1746-1785) was a Corsican lawyer from Ajaccio and the father of the imperial House of Bonaparte. Born into a patrician family of the town with earlier Tuscan roots, he studied law at Pisa and first served the Corsican independence leader Pasquale Paoli before accepting French rule after 1769. He married Letizia Ramolino in 1764, and the couple had eight children who survived to adulthood, among them Joseph, Napoleon, Lucien, Elisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline and Jerome. As a deputy of the Corsican nobility he obtained official recognition of the family's noble status, which allowed his sons free places at French military schools, the opening that set Napoleon on his career. He died at Montpellier in 1785, years before the family's rise.

Maria Letizia Ramolino (1750-1836) was the mother of Napoleon I and the matriarch of the House of Bonaparte. Born in Ajaccio to a Corsican family of Lombard descent, she married the lawyer Carlo Buonaparte in 1764 and was widowed in 1785, raising their eight surviving children in straitened circumstances. Frugal and famously unimpressed by the family's sudden grandeur, she was given the formal style Madame Mere de l'Empereur under the First Empire and kept her own household at the Hotel de Brienne in Paris. After Waterloo she settled in Rome under papal protection, where she lived until her death in 1836, outliving her son Napoleon by fifteen years and several of her other children.

Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844) was the eldest surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino and the elder brother of Napoleon I. Trained as a lawyer, he served the Republic as a diplomat and negotiated the Treaty of Luneville with Austria and the Treaty of Amiens with Britain. Napoleon made him King of Naples in 1806 and then King of Spain in 1808, a throne he held uneasily through the Peninsular War until 1813. He married Julie Clary in 1794, and their surviving daughters were Zenaide and Charlotte. After the fall of the Empire he lived for many years in the United States, near Bordentown, New Jersey, under the title Comte de Survilliers, returning to Europe late in life and dying in Florence.

Lucien Bonaparte (1775-1840) was the third surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino, and the brother whose nerve secured Napoleon's seizure of power. As president of the Council of Five Hundred on 18 Brumaire 1799 he rallied the troops when the deputies turned on his brother, making the coup succeed. He served as interior minister and as ambassador to Spain, but broke with Napoleon over his second marriage, to Alexandrine de Bleschamp, which the Emperor refused to recognise, and over his refusal of a throne. Lucien withdrew to Italy, received the title Prince of Canino and Musignano from the Pope, and was briefly held by the British while trying to sail for America. A collector and amateur archaeologist, he excavated Etruscan tombs on his estates and died at Viterbo in 1840.

Elisa Bonaparte (1777-1820) was the eldest surviving daughter of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino, and the only one of Napoleon's sisters to govern a state in her own right. Educated at the royal school of Saint-Cyr, she married the Corsican officer Felice Baciocchi in 1797. Napoleon granted her the principality of Lucca and Piombino in 1805, where she reformed the administration, revived the Carrara marble quarries and founded an academy of fine arts, and in 1809 added the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which she ruled from Florence until the Empire collapsed in 1814. Known for a businesslike style her brother respected more than he did most of the family, she spent her last years near Trieste and died there in 1820.

Eugene de Beauharnais (1781-1824) was the son of Josephine de Beauharnais by her first marriage and thus the stepson of Napoleon I, who adopted him as a French prince in 1806. Born in Paris, he served as his stepfather's aide-de-camp in Italy and Egypt and proved the most capable soldier of the imperial family, commanding the Army of Italy and fighting in the Russian campaign of 1812, where he took over the retreating army's rearguard. From 1805 he governed the Kingdom of Italy as Viceroy at Milan, and was widely respected there as an administrator. He married Princess Augusta of Bavaria, and after the Empire fell he settled in Munich as Duke of Leuchtenberg, where he died in 1824. He was the elder brother of Hortense de Beauharnais.

Hortense de Beauharnais (1783-1837) was the daughter of Josephine de Beauharnais and Alexandre de Beauharnais, the stepdaughter of Napoleon I, and the link between the two imperial generations of this family. Born in Paris, she was married in 1802 to Napoleon's brother Louis Bonaparte and became queen consort of Holland in 1806. Of their three sons, the youngest, Louis Napoleon, became Emperor Napoleon III, so Hortense was at once Napoleon I's stepdaughter, sister-in-law and the mother of his successor. Separated from her husband, she was created Duchesse de Saint-Leu and lived after 1815 in exile at Arenenberg in Switzerland, where she raised her surviving son. An accomplished amateur musician, she wrote romances including Partant pour la Syrie, which became an anthem of the Second Empire.

Napoleon Charles Bonaparte (1802-1807) was the eldest son of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense de Beauharnais, and so both a nephew and a step-grandson of Napoleon I. Born in Paris in the year his parents married, he was the first child of the next Bonaparte generation and, because Napoleon then had no legitimate son, was widely regarded as the intended heir to the Empire; his uncle was said to be deeply attached to him. He died at The Hague in 1807, aged four, shortly after his parents had become king and queen of Holland. His death pushed Napoleon towards the question of the succession that ended in the annulment of his marriage to Josephine, and left his younger brothers Napoleon Louis and the future Napoleon III as the heirs of this branch.

Charles Lucien Bonaparte (1803-1857) was a naturalist and one of the founders of modern ornithology, and the eldest son of Lucien Bonaparte and Alexandrine de Bleschamp. A nephew of Napoleon I, he grew up in Italy and spent the years 1822 to 1828 in the United States, where he studied the birds of the eastern states and published a continuation of Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology; Bonaparte's gull carries his name. Back in Europe he worked on the classification of birds and mammals, produced the Conspectus Generum Avium, and helped organise the first Italian congresses of scientists. He succeeded his father as Prince of Canino and Musignano, took part in the Roman Republic of 1849 as a member of its assembly, and spent his last years in Paris, where he died in 1857.

Napoleon Louis Bonaparte (1804-1831) was the second son of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense de Beauharnais and the elder brother of Napoleon III. Born in Paris, he was made Grand Duke of Berg by his uncle Napoleon I in 1809, a nominal sovereignty held while he was still a child, and for two days in 1810 he was titular king of Holland after his father's abdication, before the kingdom was annexed to France. Raised in Italy after the Empire fell, he married his cousin Charlotte Bonaparte, a daughter of Joseph Bonaparte, and joined the liberal insurrections against papal rule in the Romagna in 1831. He died at Forli during that campaign, aged twenty-six, leaving his younger brother as the heir of the family's imperial claim.

Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873), who reigned as Napoleon III, was the third son of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense de Beauharnais, and so a nephew of Napoleon I on his father's side and a grandson of Empress Josephine on his mother's. Raised in exile in Switzerland and Germany, he made two failed attempts to seize power in 1836 and 1840 and spent six years imprisoned at Ham before escaping to London. Elected president of the Second Republic in December 1848, he took power by coup in 1851 and was proclaimed Emperor in 1852. His Second Empire industrialised France, built its railway network and rebuilt Paris under Baron Haussmann, while abroad it fought in the Crimea and Italy and intervened in Mexico. Defeat and capture at Sedan in 1870 ended his reign; he died in exile at Chislehurst in England.