Jérôme Bonaparte
Dafato Team | May 22, 2022
Table of Content
Summary
Jérôme Bonaparte († June 24, 1860 at Château de Vilgénis, Massy), originally Girolamo Buonaparte, was the youngest brother of Napoléon Bonaparte. He was king of the Kingdom of Westphalia from 1807 to 1813; his official royal name there was Jérôme Napoleon (JN) or Hieronymus Napoleon (HN).
Jérôme is the progenitor of the only line of the Bonaparte family still existing in male lineage today.
Origin
The twelfth child of Carlo Buonaparte and his wife Laetitia Ramolino, Jérôme Buonaparte was born on November 15, 1784 into a family that belonged to the Corsican nobility and enjoyed modest prosperity. Corsica's leading noble families, which included the Buonaparte's, were in close competition with each other, especially with the revolutionary Pasquale Paoli, who had led a failed Corsican struggle for independence first against the Republic of Genoa and then against the Kingdom of France. He felt that he was the real ruler of Corsica even after the French suppression of the uprising in 1769. Since Carlo Buonaparte died only a few weeks after Jerome was born, he was raised primarily by his mother and grandmother. His brothers Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte, who were 16 and 15 years older respectively, had taken on the roles of surrogate fathers to him. They subsequently took care of Jerome's upbringing and education. When the French Revolution broke out in Paris in 1789, the 5-year-old Jerome, unlike Napoleon, was still in Corsica and could not grasp the epochal upheavals in the distance. Far more influential on him will have been the experience of fleeing from Pasquale Paoli's followers on June 13, 1793. When Lucien Bonaparte boasted in a letter that the Bonaparte family was responsible for the arrest of "the enemy" Paoli ordered by the French National Convention, the latter's followers laid waste to the Bonaparte home. Young Jerome must have become aware of being part of a family clan deeply rooted in Corsica. With the rise of Napoleon, Jerome began to develop a deep admiration for his older brother that he would maintain throughout his life.
Training
Napoleon sent his younger brother to Saint-Germain en Laye near Paris in 1795, where he was taught in an educational boarding school by the Irishman Mac Dermott. The teachers, however, failed to curb Jérôme's temperament. Instead of attending classes, he often spent his time in Paris enjoying himself. In the spring of 1797, he rushed to Lombardy, where the general Napoleon succeeded in subduing Italy within a year. Napoleon saw his youngest brother as undisciplined and profligate, but still loyal to him. Back in Paris, he made sure that Jérôme attended the Collège de Juilly. While Napoleon left for his Egyptian campaign, he entrusted his older brother Joseph Bonaparte with his supervision in 1798. Jérôme was not allowed to take part in the military coup of 18 Brumaire VIII, which made Napoleon a "First Consul" endowed with dictatorial powers, because Napoleon considered him too young.
First marriage
At Christmas 1803, Jérôme and Elisabeth were married by the Bishop of Baltimore. Napoleon did not recognize the marriage, however, because he wanted to marry Jérôme to a woman from one of the European dynasties for reasons of power politics. To change Napoleon's mind, Jérôme commissioned a series of portraits depicting him and his wife, but they were never fully completed. Despite Napoleon's admonitions, Jérôme did not return to France until 1805. Elizabeth, already pregnant, was forbidden to leave the ship, so of necessity she had to make her way to London. Jérôme undertook to annul the marriage. His first son Jérôme Napoléon Bonaparte became progenitor of the Bonaparte-Patterson line.
By letter, Jérôme assured his wife that as soon as Napoleon forgave him, he would immediately bring her back to France. He therefore consented to the next military venture Napoleon ordered him to undertake. On June 2, 1805, Napoleon wrote to Jérôme:
Jérôme took command of the warship Pomone. During the voyage to Algiers, he managed to ransom French and Italian prisoners from pirates with 450,000 francs. He later had their "liberation" exaggerated propagandistically in paintings and a theater performance.
In late 1805, Napoleon appointed his brother to command the warship Veteran, which was equipped with 74 guns and an experienced crew. During the mission to the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, he succeeded in capturing seven British ships. Overall, however, Jérôme was unable to counter the British frigates. For most of the expedition, he was on the run from the Royal Navy. With the defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar, in which Jerome was not involved, Napoleon's maritime ambitions became obsolete anyway. Even though Jerome did not receive the hoped-for permission from Napoleon at the end of his naval career to join Elizabeth, he was at least named an imperial prince for his efforts in September 1805 and included in the line of succession to the throne.
Second Marriage and Fourth Coalition War
For the establishment of a permanent succession monarchy, Napoleon depended on having his family members marry into the system of the old European dynasties. Only then could he shed his status as usurper. By marrying Jérôme to the daughter of King Frederick I of Württemberg, and thus into one of the oldest dynasties in Europe, Napoleon hoped to give his rule historical legitimacy after all. At the same time, he wanted to bind the Kingdom of Württemberg closely to him in terms of alliance policy. Jérôme's feelings regarding a relationship played no role for Napoleon. Years later, Jérôme had a portrait of Elizabeth Patterson painted - an indication that he had still not come to terms with his first love. Napoleon, however, over Jérôme's head, brought up a marriage union between Catherine of Württemberg and Jérôme during his visit to Stuttgart in January 1806. King Frederick I was not averse to this plan and agreed to it in February 1806. However, the marriage, scheduled for October 1806 on September 9, 1806, had to be postponed due to the outbreak of the Fourth Coalition War.
Napoleon took Jérôme with him on his campaign against Prussia. The campaign was not inconvenient for the French emperor, because Prussia and its allied states in central and northern Germany were not yet ready to join the French alliance system, the Confederation of the Rhine. From the parts of the northern and central German principalities, Napoleon was already planning the formation of a new kingdom, which he wanted to hand over to Jérôme. To justify Jérôme's installation as king, he was to be granted a role in the military victory over Prussia. Therefore, Napoleon appointed him a general and placed under his command one Württemberg and two Bavarian divisions with which he was to conquer Prussian Silesia. To ensure the success of the operation, Jérôme was assisted by experienced officers such as Dominique Joseph Vandamme. On January 8, 1807, Jérôme actually accepted the surrender of the fortresses of Glogau and Breslau. Jérôme nevertheless expressed his dissatisfaction to Napoleon, since he had not been allowed to take part in the battle of Jena and Auerstedt, which was actually decisive for the war.
In the course of the French expansion policy, which after 1804 also extended to the German lands on the right bank of the Rhine, Napoleon established new states by edict that were loyal to France. Their highest representatives and administrators were mostly devoted confidants or relatives of the emperor ("crowned prefects").
Thus, after the Peace of Tilsit (1807), the Kingdom of Westphalia was created for Jérôme from the former Duchy of Brunswick, Electorate of Hesse and former Hanoverian and Prussian territories. Kassel, hitherto the residence of the Electors of Hesse-Kassel, was designated the capital, and King Jérôme (Jerome) ruled from here. After the Kassel City Palace of the Electors and Landgraves of Hesse, inhabited by Jérôme and his court, burned down in 1811, he resided in Bellevue Palace. The court also used Wilhelmshöhe Palace in the Bergpark, which was called "Napoleonshöhe" during Napoléon's rule over Europe.
The king was called "King Lustig" or also "King Lustik" by the citizens of Kassel, since his German language skills are said to have exhausted themselves in the phrases "Tomorrow again lustig!" and "lustik, lustik demain encore lustik"; this name is also said to have characterized his style of government. His first name has kept itself verballhornt in the north Hessian dialect as a designation for a rogue or philanderer ("Schrohm"). Jérôme also stands for the first parliament on German soil, established in 1810 in the Fridericianum as the Palace of the Estates, for the Code civil (printed in German in Kassel, among other places) and for the oldest German constitution, the Constitution. Jérôme had three children with Katharina von Württemberg.
Napoleon's ideas were the basis for the plan to develop the new kingdom into a model and reform state. He abolished serfdom by law and introduced religious freedom.
The 1809 uprising from Homberg (Efze) led by Wilhelm von Dörnberg against Jérôme failed, as did the 1809 raids by Prussian officers (e.g. Ferdinand von Schill, who was repulsed by Jérôme's Minister of War Philippe François Maurice d'Albignac) and the incursion of the Black Flock.
As commander of a corps of the Grande Armée, the militarily inexperienced Jérôme took part in the Russian campaign in 1812. The slow advance of his corps was one of the reasons why an early encirclement of the Russian 2nd Western Army under Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration failed. As a result, Napoleon felt that Jerome should have been where he was on July 3, but was not until July 6. After the Battle of Mir and differences with his brother, Jérôme withdrew from the Grande Armée. He lived at Mir Castle for a short time, but then left Russia and returned to Westphalia. At the Battle of Borodino, most of the 28,000-man Westphalian contingent was destroyed.
After the Battle of Leipzig (1813), the Kingdom of Westphalia dissolved. Already on October 1, 1813, an advance party of Russian Cossacks led by General Chernyshev had taken Kassel and declared the kingdom dissolved. At the head of a handful of Frenchmen, however, Jérôme had returned again from October 16 to 26, before he had to flee to Paris for good. After the abdication of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna in 1814
After Napoleon's return from Elba in March 1815, Jérôme placed himself at his brother's disposal during the Hundred Days. He took command of the 6th Division of the 2nd Corps under General Honoré Charles Reille. During the Battle of Waterloo (May 18), he led several loss-making assaults on the left wing against the British positions at the Hougoumont homestead.
After the Bourbon Restoration, Jérôme left France and first went into exile in Austria, where he was assigned Schönau an der Triesting Castle (Lower Austria, pol. Bez. Baden) as his residence. Later he lived in Trieste.
Queen Catherine rejected the request of her Württemberg relatives to divorce her. She remained married to Jérôme - despite his amorous adventures - until the end of her life. His father-in-law, the King of Württemberg, granted Jérôme the title of Prince of Montfort. Catherine died on November 28, 1835.
When his nephew Prince Louis Napoleon became French president in 1848, the latter appointed Jérôme governor of the Invalides. In the Empire of Napoleon III, he became Marshal of France and President of the Senate. In addition, his title was confirmed as an imperial prince. Around Jérôme, a liberal wing of the Bonapartists established itself as an antithesis to the conservative emperor.
On February 19, 1853, Jérôme married Giustina Pecori-Suárez, widow of the Italian nobleman Luigi Bartolini-Baldelli, in Florence in his third marriage. In 1860 he died at the Château de Vilgénis in Massy. He was buried in the Invalides Cathedral in Paris.
The descendants of his sons are the only ones from his family who still bear the name Bonaparte. After the fall and death of Napoleon III (1870 and 1873 respectively) and the death of his son Napoléon Eugène Louis Bonaparte (1879), Jérôme's son Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte became the head of the Bonapartists.
From a premarital relationship with the wife of French officer Jean-Jacques Lagarde, Adélaïde Mélanie, née Denizot:
First marriage: Jérôme Bonaparte married Elizabeth Patterson in 1803.
Second marriage: Jérôme Bonaparte married Catherine of Württemberg († 1835), daughter of Frederick I, King of Württemberg, in 1807.
The local genealogical book Fürstenhagen by Klaus Kunze and the local family book Dassensen
From the extramarital marriage with Diana Rabe von Pappenheim, née Freiin Waldner von Freundstein (1788-1844), wife of the chief master of ceremonies Wilhelm Maximilian Rabe von Pappenheim:
Another illegitimate son was the Württemberg state geologist and cartographer Heinrich Bach (1812-1870). His mother Ernestine Luise Countess von Pückler-Limburg (1784-1824) was married to Georg zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg (1775-1855).
His name is inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in the 5th column. In addition, King Frederick William III of Prussia had awarded him the Order of the Black Eagle on October 27, 1810.
