When Louisa Adams met Joseph Bonaparte

After spending the summer of 1822 in Philadelphia nursing her sick brother, Louisa Adams accepted an invitation to visit her friends Joseph and Emily Hopkinson in nearby Bordentown, New Jersey. The Hopkinsons were friends and neighbours of Joseph Bonaparte, who had fled to the United States after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815. Joseph owned a large estate called Point Breeze, on Crosswicks Creek near the Delaware River.

Louisa arrived in Bordentown on September 16, 1822. She met Joseph – who had once been King of Naples, and then King of Spain, but now called himself the Count of Survilliers – the next day.

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Joseph Bonaparte by Charles Willson Peale, 1820

Eugénie de Montijo

Eugénie de Montijo, as she became known in France, was educated in Paris, at the fashionable Convent of the Sacré Cœur. When Prince Louis Napoléon, son of Hortense de Beauharnais became president of the Second Republic,  

Elysée Palace 

she appeared with her mother at several balls given by the "prince-president" at the Elysée Palace; it was there that she met the future emperor, whom she wed on 30 January 1853. 

Throughout the early 1850s Eugénie and Napoleon played cat and mouse.  He tried to take her arm, she reminded him that her mother took precedence over her, and consigned her frustrated swain to escorting her mother on walks.  She made it clear their was no action without marriage, he sent official emissaries to call on Dona Manuela and Eugénie to inform them that under no circumstances would he be marrying Eugénie.  He sent her completely inappropriate gifts, the sort that men sent mistresses, not women they were courting, sheaccepted them, and reciprocated with…nothing! He invited Eugénie to events specifically engineered to tempt or trick her into an assignation, she stubbornly remained surrounded by chaperones and other men.  At once house party Napoleon is reputed to have asked Eugénie the way to her room (some versions say ‘heart’), to which she coyly replied “through the chapel Sire.” 
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thedreamstress

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