Joseph Bonaparte

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.

Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte (1815-1881) was a son of Lucien Bonaparte and Alexandrine de Bleschamp, and a nephew of Napoleon I. Born in Rome during his parents' Italian exile, he led an unsettled early life in the Americas, spending time in the United States, Colombia and Brazil, before returning to Europe. After the revolution of 1848 he was elected a deputy for Corsica in the Constituent Assembly, where he sat with the left and often opposed his cousin Louis Napoleon, the future Napoleon III. He remained a marginal figure at the imperial court and lived largely away from Paris, in Belgium and in the south of France. He died at Versailles in 1881. His son Roland Bonaparte became a geographer and president of the Societe de Geographie.

Napoleon Eugene Louis Bonaparte (1856-1879), the Prince Imperial, was the only child of Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie and the heir to the Second Empire. His birth at the Tuileries was celebrated across France as securing the dynasty. He accompanied his father to the front in 1870 and was under fire at Saarbrucken at the age of fourteen, weeks before the Empire fell. The family took refuge in England, where he completed his education at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and became, on his father's death in 1873, the Bonapartist claimant recognised by the party in France. Seeking active service, he joined the British forces in the Anglo-Zulu War and was killed in a skirmish in Zululand in June 1879, aged twenty-three. His death passed the family's claim to the descendants of Jerome Bonaparte.

Prince Charles Napoleon Bonaparte, born in 1950, is the son of Prince Louis Napoleon and a senior living descendant of Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon I's youngest brother. Trained as an economist, he has worked as a consultant and written books on his family and on Napoleonic history, and has been active in local politics in Corsica and in Provence, serving as a municipal councillor and deputy mayor of Ajaccio, the town where the family began. He has helped found associations that promote Napoleonic heritage sites across Europe. His father's will named his son Jean-Christophe rather than him as head of the house, a decision he has publicly disputed, and Bonapartist opinion has been divided between them since 1997. His children with Princess Beatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies are Caroline and Jean-Christophe.

Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoleon, born in 1986, is the current head of the House of Bonaparte and the senior representative of Napoleon I's family today. The son of Prince Charles Napoleon and Princess Beatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, he was named heir in the will of his grandfather Prince Louis Napoleon, who died in 1997 and passed over his own son, a decision that has been contested within the family. He studied at HEC Paris and took an MBA at Harvard Business School, and has worked in private equity and investment banking in London and Paris. He takes part in Napoleonic commemorations in France and abroad, including the bicentenary observances of 2021. In 2019 he married Countess Olympia von und zu Arco-Zinneberg at Les Invalides in Paris, where Napoleon I is buried.

Prince Victor Napoleon Bonaparte (1862-1926) was the elder son of Prince Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte and Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy, and head of the House of Bonaparte from 1891 until his death. Born in Paris during the Second Empire, he grew up in exile after its fall in 1870. Bonapartists who found his father's radicalism unacceptable transferred their allegiance to him in 1884, and his father's will confirmed the breach; the French law exiling pretenders kept him out of the country, so he settled in Brussels and lived there for the rest of his life. In 1910 he married Princess Clementine of Belgium, daughter of King Leopold II, and their children were Princess Marie Clotilde and Prince Louis Napoleon, his successor as head of the family. He died in Brussels in 1926.