Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Volume 15

by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

In August 1810, affecting uneasiness as Napoleon stretched his power over Rome, Lucien embarked for America, but he was captured by the English and taken, first to Malta and then to England, where he passed the years till 1814 in a sort of honourable captivity, first at Ludlow and then at Thorngrove, not far from that town.

In 1814 Lucien was released, when he went to Rome, where he was welcomed by the kindly old Pope, who remembered the benefits conferred by Napoleon on the Church, while he forgot the injuries personal to himself; and the stiff-necked Republican, the one-time "Brutus" Bonaparte, accepted the title of Duke of Musignano and Prince of Canino.

In 1815 Lucien joined his brother, whom he wished to abdicate at the Champ de Mai in favour of the King of Rome, placing his sword only at the disposal of France. This step was seriously debated, but, though it might have placed the Allies in a more difficult position, it would certainly have been disregarded by them, at least unless some great victory had given the dynasty firmer footing. After Waterloo he was in favour of a dissolution of the Chambers, but Napoleon had become hopeless and almost apathetic, while Lucien himself, from his former connection with the 18th and 19th Brumaire, was looked on with great distrust by the Chambers, as indeed he was by his brother. Advantage was taken of his Roman title to taunt him with not being a Frenchman; and all his efforts failed. At the end he fled, and failing to cross to England or to get to Rochefort, he reached Turin on the 12th of July only to find himself arrested. He remained there till the 15th of September, when he was allowed to go to Rome. There he was interned and carefully watched; indeed in 1817 the Pope had to intervene to prevent his removal to the north of Germany, so anxious were the Allies as to the safety of the puppet they had put on the throne of France.

The death of Napoleon in 1821 released Lucien and the Bonaparte family from the constant surveillance exercised over them till then. In 1830 he bought a property, the Croce del Biacco, near Bologna. The flight of the elder branch of the Bourbons from France in 1830 raised his hopes, and, as already said, he went to England in 1832 to meet Joseph and to plan some step for raising Napoleon II. to the throne. The news of the death of his nephew dashed all the hopes of the family, and after staying in England for some time he returned to Italy, dying at Viterbo in 1840, and being buried at Canino, where also his second wife lies. Lucien had a taste for literature, and was the author of several works, which a kindly posterity will allow to die.

Louis Bonaparte had fled from his Kingdom of Holland in 1810, after a short reign of four years, disgusted with being expected to study the interests of the brother to whom he owed his throne, and with being required to treat his wife Hortense with ordinary consideration. He had taken refuge in Austria, putting that Court in great anxiety how to pay him the amount of attention to be expected by the brother of the Emperor, and at the same time the proper coldness Napoleon might wish shown to a royal deserter. Thanks to the suggestions of Metternich, they seem to have been successful in this task. Taking the title of Comte de, St. Len from an estate in France; Louis went first to Toplitz, then to Gratz, and in 1813 he took refuge in Switzerland. In 1814 he went to Rome; and then to Florence, where the Grand-Duke Ferdinand received any of the family who came there with great kindness.

Louis was the least interesting of the family, and it is difficult to excuse his absence from France in 1815. After all, the present of a kingdom is not such an unpardonable offence as to separate brothers for ever, and Napoleon seems to have felt deeply the way in which he was treated by a brother to whom he had acted as a father; still ill-health and the natural selfishness of invalids may account for much. While his son Louis Napoleon was flying about making his attempts on France, Louis remained in the Roman Palace of the French Academy, sunk in anxiety about his religious state. He disclaimed his son's proceedings, but this may have been due to the Pope, who sheltered him. Anyhow, it is strange to mark the difference between the father and his two sons who came of age, and who took to revolution so kindly.

In 1846 Louis was ill at Leghorn when his son escaped from Ham, where he had been imprisoned after his Boulogne attempt. Passports were refused to the son to go from Italy to his father, and Louis died alone on the 25th of July 1846. He was buried at Santa Croce, Florence, but the body was afterwards removed to the village church of St. Leu Taverny, rebuilt by his son Napoleon III.

Jerome, the youngest of the whole family, the "middy," as Napoleon liked to call him, had been placed in the navy, in which profession he passed as having distinguished himself, after leaving his admiral in rather a peculiar manner, by attacking an English convoy, and eventually escaping the English by running into the port of Concarneau, believed to be inaccessible. At that time it was an event for a French man-of-war to reach home.

Jerome had incurred the anger of Napoleon by marrying a beautiful young lady of Baltimore, a Mica Paterson, but, more obedient than Lucien, he submitted to have this marriage annulled by his all-powerful brother, and in reward he received the brand-new Kingdom of Westphalia, and the hand of a daughter of the King of Wartemberg, "the cleverest King in Europe," according to Napoleon. Jerome is said to have ruled rather more as a Heliogabalus than a Solomon, but the new Kingdom had the advantage of starting with good administrators, and with the example of "the Code."

In 1812 Jerome was given the command of the right wing of the Grand Army in its advance against Russia, but he did not fulfil the expectations of his brother, and Davoust took the command instead. Every king feels himself a born general: whatever else they cannot do, war is an art which comes with the crown, and Jerome, unwilling to serve under a mere Marshal, withdrew in disgust. In 1813 he had the good feeling and the good sense to refuse the treacherous offer of the Allies to allow him to retain his kingdom if he joined them against his brother, a snare his sister Caroline fell into at Naples.