Children of Hortense de Beauharnais.

 

A portrait of Napoleon Charles Bonaparte with his mother, Hortense.

 

Napoleon Charles Bonaparte (10 October 1802 – 5 May 1807) was the eldest son of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense de Beauharnais. His father,  was the younger brother of Emperor Napoleon I and his mother was the daughter of Josephine de Beauharnais, Napoleon's first wife. At the time of his birth his uncle was First Consul of France and childless. Napoleon Charles was his eldest nephew and seen as a potential heir, but he died before reaching his fifth birthday on 5 May 1807.

 

Napoléon Louis Bonaparte (October 11, 1804 – March 17, 1831), or Louis II of Holland, was the middle son of Louis Napoléon, King of Holland, and Hortense de Beauharnais. His father was the younger brother of Emperor Napoléon I and king of Holland, while his mother was the daughter of Josephine de Beauharnais, Napoléon's first wife. Napoléon Louis's elder brother, Napoléon Charles, died in 1807, when he was only four years old. On his death, Napoléon Louis became Prince Royal of the Kingdom of Holland. It also made Napoléon Louis the eldest nephew of the Emperor, who at the time had no children, and likely eventual successor, a status he lost on March 20, 1811, when his uncle's second wife, Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, gave birth to a son, Napoléon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte, styled King of Rome and later Duke of Reichstadt.

In 1809 Napoléon appointed him as Grand Duke of Berg, a status he kept to 1813.

For the five days between his father's abdication and the fall of Holland to the invading French army in 1810, Louis Napoléon reigned as Lodewijk II, King of Holland.

When Napoléon was deposed in 1815 after the Battle of Waterloo the House of Bourbon was restored to the throne of France. Napoléon Louis fled into exile, but the Bonapartes never abandoned the thought of restoring the Napoleonic Empire.

Napoléon Louis married his first cousin, Charlotte, the daughter of Joseph Bonaparte, eldest brother of Napoléon I. He and his younger brother Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte settled in Italy, where they espoused liberal politics and became involved with the Carbonari, an organization fighting Austria's domination of northern Italy. On 17 March 1831, while fleeing Italy due to a crackdown on revolutionary activity by Papal and Austrian troops, Napoléon Louis, suffering from measles, died the arms of his brother in Forlì. Eventually the Napoleonic Empire was restored by Napoléon Louis's younger brother who became Napoléon III in 1852.

Napoléon Louis is buried at Saint-Leu-La-Foret, Île-de-France.
 

 

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (20 April 1808  – 9 January 1873) During Napoleon I's reign, Louis-Napoléon's parents had been made king and queen of the Kingdom of Holland. After Napoleon I's military defeats and deposition in 1815 and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France, all members of the Bonaparte dynasty were forced into exile. Louis-Napoléon was brought up in Switzerland, living with his mother in Arenenberg Castle in the canton of Thurgau, and in Germany, receiving his education at the gymnasium school at Augsburg, Bavaria. As a young man, he settled in Italy, where he and his elder brother Napoléon Louis espoused liberal politics and became involved with the Carbonari, an organization fighting Austria's domination of northern Italy. On 17 March 1831, while fleeing Italy due to a crackdown on revolutionary activity by Papal and Austrian troops, Louis-Napoléon's brother, suffering from measles, died in his arms. His experiences in Italy later had a profound effect on his foreign policy. Louis-Napoléon travelled on to France where he was quickly arrested and quietly sent to England. 
Read more: wiki/Napoleon_III

Nortense, Charles de Flahaut, Duc de Morny and exile

Hortense had been treated kindly after Napoleon's first defeat; she was in the good graces of Emperor Alexander I of Russia, and even the new Bourbon King seemed to like her. However, they could not forgive her for sticking by her stepfather upon his return from Elba, and consequently she had to leave France. She escaped with both her sons to Switzerland and eventually ended up near the Bodensee close to Konstanz. There she bought a small castle on a cliff overlooking the lake: Schloss Arenenberg.  
To complicate matters further, by the time of her exile she was pregnant. As she had not seen her husband for some years, this pregnancy would cause a scandal.The father of her illegitimate child was Charles de Flahaut; their child was born in Switzerland and was named Charles after his father. He was taken to France, where he was raised by his father and paternal grandmother. This last son of hers, Charles de Morny, would later be created a duke by his half-brother Napoleon III and would become one of France's most important statesmen during the Second Empire.

 

wiki/Charles_Joseph,_comte_de_Flahaut

Hortense was now free to respond to the romantic overtures of the man whom she had long admired, Colonel Charles Joseph, Comte de Flahaut, a sophisticated, handsome man rumoured to be the illegitimate son of Talleyrand. They soon became lovers. In 1811 at an unspecified inn in Switzerland close to Lake Geneva Hortense secretly gave birth to a son by her lover,

• Charles Auguste Louis Joseph ( 21 October 1811 - 10 March 1865), later made duc de Morny by his half-brother, Napoleon III.

Only her brother Eugéne, Adélaide Filleul de Sousa, de Flahaut's mother, and her closest companions were aware of her pregnancy and the subsequent birth. She had used poor health to explain her prolonged visit to Switzerland, the journey having been arranged by Adélaide. Hortense cleverly disguised her pregnancy ( she was by then, in her sixth month), during the baptism of Napoleon's son, Napoleon II when she was chosen to be one of the child's godmothers, an honour she shared with Madame Mere, mother of the Emperor. Charles-Joseph-de-Flahaut/Hortense-de-Beauharnais
 

 

wiki/Charles_de_Morny,_Duke_of_Morny

 

Charles de Morny was born in Switzerland,^[1] and his birth was duly registered in a misleading certificate, which made him the legitimate son of Auguste Jean Hyacinthe Demorny, born in Paris on 23 October 1811,^[2] and described as a landowner of St. Domingo. M. Demorny was in fact an officer in the Prussian army and a native of St. Domingo, though he owned no land there or elsewhere.

 

 

www.flickr.com/photos/olesyaclark
 

In 1856, he was sent as special envoy to the coronation of Alexander II of Russia and brought home a wife, whom he married at St. Petersburg on 7 January 1857, Princess Sofia Sergeyevna Trubetskaya (Moscow, 25 March 1836 – 8 August 1896), the only daughter of Prince Sergey Vasilyevich Trubetskoy (1814 - 12 May (30 April Old Style), 1859) and his wife Ekaterina Petrovna Mussina-Pushkina (1 February 1816 - c. 1897). His wife's connections greatly strengthened his social position. Sophie was legally daughter of Prince Sergey Vasilyevich Trubetskoy, but may have been the illegitimate daughter of Nicholas I of Russia. I

Duc de Morny

Charles Auguste Louis Joseph Demorny/de Morny, 1st Duc de Morny (15–16 September 1811 in Switzerland – 10 March 1865 in Paris) was a French statesman. He was the natural son of Hortense de Beauharnais (wife of Louis Bonaparte, and queen of Holland) and Charles Joseph, comte de Flahaut, and therefore half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III. He was born in Switzerland,[1] and his birth was duly registered in a misleading certificate which made him the legitimate son of Auguste Jean Hyacinthe Demorny, born in Paris on 23 October 1811,[2] and described as a landowner of St. Domingo. M. Demorny was in fact an officer in the Prussian army and a native of St. Domingo, though he owned no land there or elsewhere.