Prince Napoléon Bonaparte


Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, usually called Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte or Jérôme Bonaparte, was the second son of Jerome, King of Westphalia and his second wife Catharina of Württemberg. An oustpoken liberal, he became the de facto head of the House of Bonaparte from 1879 to his death. He wasn't considered a legitimate pretender to the throne by many Bonapartists, due to his father's previous marriage without divorce. They instead preferred his son Victor. From the 1880s he was one of the stronger supporters of General Georges Boulanger, together with other monarchist forces.
As well as bearing the title of Prince Napoléon, given him by his cousin Emperor Napoleon III in 1852,
he was also 3rd Prince of Montfort, 1st Count of Meudon and Count of Moncalieri, following his marriage with Maria Clotilde of Savoy in 1859. His popular nickname, Plon-Plon, stemmed from his difficulty in pronouncing his own name while still a child.

Biography

Born at Trieste in the Austrian Empire, and known as "Prince Napoléon", "Prince Jérôme Napoléon, or by the sobriquet of "Plon-Plon", he was a close advisor to his first cousin, Napoleon III of France, and in particular was seen as a leading advocate of French intervention in Italy on behalf of Camillo di Cavour and the Italian nationalists.
An anti-clerical liberal, he led that faction at court and tried to influence the Emperor to anti-clerical policies, against the contrary influence of the Emperor's wife, the Empress Eugenie, a devout Catholic and a conservative, and the patroness of those who wanted French troops to protect the Pope's sovereignty in Rome. The Emperor was to navigate between the two influences throughout his reign.
When his cousin became President in 1848, Napoleon was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Spain. He later served in a military capacity as general of a division in the Crimean War, as Governor of Algeria, and as a corps commander in the French Army of Italy in 1859. His curious nickname, "Plon-Plon", derives from his pronunciation of his name when he was a child, while the nickname "Craint-Plomb" was given to him by the army due to his absence from the Battle of Solferino.
As part of his cousin's policy of alliance with Piedmont-Sardinia, in 1859 Prince Napoleon married Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy, daughter of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.
When Napoléon Eugène, Prince Imperial died in 1879, Prince Napoleon became, genealogically, the most senior member of the Bonaparte family, but the Prince Imperial's will excluded him from the succession, nominating Prince Napoleon's son Napoléon Victor Jérôme Frédéric Bonaparte as the new head of the family. As a result, Prince Napoleon and his son quarrelled for the remainder of Prince Napoleon's life.
Prince Napoléon died in Rome in 1891, aged 68. Prince Napoléon, upon being banished from France by the 1886 law exiling heads of the nation's former ruling dynasties, settled at Prangins on the shores of Lake Geneva, in Vaud, Switzerland where, during the Second Empire, he had acquired a piece of property. The assets he left his heir were extremely modest: Besides the Villa Prangins and the adjoining estate of 75 hectares, estimated at 800,000 francs of the time, approximately 130 million of France's old francs, they were limited to a portfolio valued at 1,000,000 francs, about 160 million old francs.

Issue

He and Maria Clotilde had three children:
NameBirthDeathNotes
Victor, Prince Napoléon18621926married Princess Clémentine of Belgium, a daughter of Leopold II of Belgium.
Louis Bonaparte18641932Russian Lieutenant General and Governor of Erivan
Maria Letizia Bonaparte18661926who in 1888 became the second wife of her maternal uncle Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, who had, from 1870 until 1873, reigned as King of Spain.

Honours