Editing Lucien Bonaparte

{{Short description|French politician and diplomat}}
{{Other uses}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2021}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| name                = Lucien Bonaparte
| honorific_suffix    = [[Prince of Canino and Musignano]]
| image               = Fabre - Lucien Bonaparte.jpg
| caption             = Portrait by [[François-Xavier Fabre]], 1808
| office              = [[Minister of the Interior (France)|Minister of the Interior]]
| term                = 25 December 1799 – 7 November 1800
| predecessor         = [[Pierre-Simon Laplace]]
| successor           = [[Jean-Antoine Chaptal]]
| office1             = President of the [[Council of Five Hundred]]
| term1               = 23 October 1799 – 12 November 1799
| predecessor1        = [[Jean-Pierre Chazal]]
| successor1          = [[Antoine Jacques Claude Joseph, comte Boulay de la Meurthe|Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe]]
| office2             = Member of the [[Council of Five Hundred]] for [[Liamone]]
| term2               = 12 April 1798 – 26 December 1799
| spouse              = {{plainlist|
* {{marriage|[[Christine Boyer]]|1794|1800|end=died}}
* {{marriage|[[Alexandrine de Bleschamp]]|1802}}}}
| father              = [[Carlo Buonaparte]]
| mother              = [[Letizia Ramolino]]
| birth_date          = 21 May 1775
| birth_place         = [[Ajaccio]], [[Corsica]], [[Kingdom of France]]
| death_date          = {{Death date and age|1840|6|29|1775|5|21|df=y}}
| death_place         = [[Viterbo]], [[Papal States]]
| place of burial     = 
| signature           = Lucien-Bonaparte_Autograph.svg
}}

'''Lucien Bonaparte, 1st Prince of Canino and Musignano''' ({{IPA|fr|lysjɛ̃ bɔnapaʁt}}; born '''Luciano Buonaparte'''; 21 May 1775 – 29 June 1840), was a French politician and diplomat of the [[French Revolution]] and the [[French Consulate|Consulate]]. He served as [[Minister of the Interior (France)|Minister of the Interior]] from 1799 to 1800 and as the president of the [[Council of Five Hundred]] in 1799.

The third surviving son of [[Carlo Bonaparte]] and his wife [[Letizia Ramolino]], Lucien was the younger brother of [[Napoleon Bonaparte]]. As president of the Council of Five Hundred, he was one of the participants of the [[Coup of 18 Brumaire]] that brought Napoleon to power in France.

==Early life==
Lucien was born in [[Ajaccio]], [[Corsica]], on 21 May 1775. He was educated in mainland [[Kingdom of France|France]], initially studying at the military schools of [[Autun]] and [[Brienne-le-Château|Brienne]]. After his father's death, he attended the seminary of [[Aix-en-Provence]], from which he dropped out in 1789.<ref name=FN>{{cite web|url=https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/biographies/lucien-bonaparte-prince-of-canino-1775-1840-minister/|title=Lucien Bonaparte (Prince of Canino), 1775-1840, Minister|website=napoleon.org|publisher=[[Fondation Napoléon]]}}</ref>

==Revolutionary activities==
Lucien became a staunch supporter of the [[French Revolution]] upon its outbreak in 1789, when he was 14 years old.<ref name=WHE>{{cite web|website=[[World History Encyclopedia]]|title=Napoleon Bonaparte During the Early French Revolution (1789-1794)|author=Harrison W. Mark|date=14 July 2022|url=https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2036/napoleon-bonaparte-during-the-early-french-revolut/}}</ref> He returned to Corsica at the start of the Revolution, and became an outspoken orator at the Corsican chapter of the [[Jacobin Club]] in Ajaccio, where he adopted the alias "[[Brutus]] Bonaparte".<ref name=WHE/><ref name=FN/> In 1791, he became a secretary to Corsican patriot [[Pasquale Paoli]], but broke with him in May 1793 (along with his brother Napoleon).<ref name=WHE/>

After returning to mainland [[French First Republic|France]], Lucien held a number of minor administrative posts from 1793 until 1795, when he was briefly jailed for his Jacobin activity, during the [[Thermidorian Reaction]].<ref name=FN/> He was released thanks to Napoleon's intervention, who then found him an administrative assignment in the [[Army of the North (France)|Army of the North]].<ref name=FN/>

==Political career==
In 1798, Lucien was [[1798 French legislative election|elected]] member of the [[Council of Five Hundred]] for Corsica's [[Liamone]] department (although he was not old enough to run for election).<ref name=FN/> In the legislature, he mostly voted with the Neo-Jacobins, and participated in the [[Coup of 30 Prairial VII]]. However, [[Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès]]' influence and news of the [[French campaign in Egypt and Syria|events in Egypt]] led to a shift in his political stance, and Lucien became one of the main plotters of ''coup d'état'' of [[18 Brumaire]], in which Napoleon overthrew the government of the [[French Directory|Directory]] to replace it by the [[French Consulate|Consulate]].

On 23 October 1799, Lucien was elected president of the Council of Five Hundred. On 9 November 1799 (18 Brumaire Year VIII on the [[French Republican Calendar]]), he had pamphlets distributed in Paris that detailed a fake Jacobin plot, which he used to justify the relocation of the Council to the suburban security of [[Saint-Cloud]].<ref name=FN/> The next day, while presiding over a heated council session, Lucien managed to buy time until Napoleon's sudden entrance into the chamber surrounded by [[grenadiers]].<ref name=FN/> During the coup, Lucien swore he would stab his brother in the chest if he ever betrayed the principles of ''[[Liberté, égalité, fraternité]]''.<ref name=FN/> The following day, Lucien arranged for Napoleon's formal election as [[First Consul]].

Under the Consulate, Lucien was appointed [[list of Interior Ministers of France|Minister of the Interior]] on 25 December 1799.<ref name=FN/>  In this capacity, Lucien oversaw the appointment of the first [[Prefect (France)|prefects]] and falsified the results of the [[1800 French constitutional referendum|constitutional referendum]] of February 1800.<ref name=FN/> He clashed over the right to oversee Paris police matters with [[Joseph Fouché]],<ref name=FN/> the Minister of Police, who showed Napoleon a subversive pamphlet possibly written by Lucien and effected a breach between the brothers. Some evidence exists that Napoleon himself wrote the pamphlet and scapegoated his brother when it was received poorly.<ref name=scur>Scurr, Ruth, ''Napoleon: A Life Told in Gardens and Shadows'', (Liveright, 2021), pp 119.</ref> He resigned as minister in November 1800.<ref name=FN/>

Following his resignation, on 7 November 1800 Lucien was sent as [[ambassador]] to the [[Royal court|court]] of King [[Charles IV of Spain]], where his diplomatic talents won over the [[House of Bourbon|Bourbon]] royal family and, perhaps as importantly, the minister [[Manuel de Godoy]].<ref name=shom>Schom, Alan, ''Napoleon Bonaparte'', (HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), pp 237, 238.</ref> In March 1801, Lucien and Godoy signed the [[Treaty of Aranjuez (1801)|Treaty of Aranjuez]], establishing the French client kingdom of [[Kingdom of Etruria|Etruria]].<ref name=FN/> On 4 August 1801 he was created a Grand-Officer of the [[National Order of the Legion of Honour]].{{Citation needed|date=March 2025}}

===Disputes with Napoleon===
Though he was a member of the ''[[Tribunat]]'' and on 4 August 1801 was made a [[senator]] of the [[First French Empire]], Lucien came to oppose many of Napoleon's ideas. In 1804, with Lucien disliking Napoleon's intention to declare himself as Emperor of the French and to marry Lucien off to a Bourbon Spanish princess, [[Maria Luisa of Spain, Duchess of Lucca|the Queen of Etruria]], Lucien spurned all imperial honours and went into self-imposed exile by living initially in [[Rome]], where he bought the [[Villa Rufinella]] in [[Frascati]].{{Citation needed|date=March 2025}}

==Later years==
[[File:Robert Lefèvre - Lucien Bonaparte, Prince de Canino (1755-1840).jpg|thumb|left|Portrait by [[Robert Lefèvre]] in the [[Palace of Versailles]]]]
In 1809, Napoleon increased pressure on Lucien to divorce his wife and return to France, even having their mother write a letter encouraging him to abandon her and return. With the whole of the [[Papal States]] annexed to France and the Pope imprisoned, Lucien was a virtual prisoner in his Italian estates, requiring permission of the Military Governor to venture off his property. He ceased to be a senator on 27 September 1810. He attempted to sail to the United States to escape his situation but was captured by the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|British]].<ref name=FN/> When he disembarked in Britain, he was greeted with cheers and applause by the crowd, many of whom saw him as anti-Napoleonic.

The government permitted Lucien to settle comfortably with his family at [[Ludlow]], and later at Thorngrove House in [[Grimley, Worcestershire|Grimley]], Worcestershire, where he worked on a heroic poem on [[Charlemagne]]. Napoleon, believing Lucien had deliberately gone to Britain and thus a traitor, had Lucien omitted from the Imperial [[almanacs]] of the Bonapartes from 1811 until his 1814 abdication.{{Citation needed|date=March 2025}}

Lucien returned to France following his brother's abdication in April 1814.<ref name=FN/> He continued to Rome, where on 18 August 1814 he was made [[Prince of Canino and Musignano|Prince of Canino]], Count of Apollino, and Lord of Nemori by [[Pope Pius VII]].<ref name=stroud>Stroud, Patricia Tyson, ''The Emperor of Nature: Charles-Lucien Bonaparte and his world'', (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp.21; 160.</ref>

In the [[Hundred Days]] after Napoleon's return to France from exile in [[Elba]], Lucien rallied to his brother's cause, and they joined forces once again during Napoleon's brief return to power.<ref name=FN/> His brother made him a French Prince and included his children into the Imperial Family, but this was not recognized by the Bourbons after Napoleon's second abdication. Subsequently, Lucien was proscribed at the [[Bourbon Restoration in France|Restoration]] and deprived of his ''fauteuil'' at the [[Académie Française]]. He was made Prince of Musignano on 21 March 1824 by [[Pope Leo XII]].<ref name=stroud/> In 1836 he wrote his ''Mémoires''. He was created Prince Buonaparte on 16 April 1837 by [[Pope Gregory XVI]]. He died in [[Viterbo]], Papal States, on 29 June 1840, of [[stomach cancer]], the same disease that claimed his father and, reportedly, his brother Napoleon.<ref name=stroud/>

===Academic activities===
Lucien Bonaparte was the inspiration behind the Napoleonic reconstitution of the dispersed [[Académie Française]] in 1803, where he took a seat. He collected paintings in ''la maison de campagne'' at [[Brienne]], was a member of [[Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Récamier]]'s [[Salon (gathering)|salon]] and wrote a novel, ''La Tribu indienne.'' He was an amateur archeologist, establishing excavations at his property in [[Frascati]] which produced a complete statue of [[Tiberius]], and at Musignano which rendered a bust of [[Juno (mythology)|Juno]]. Bonaparte owned a parcel which had once formed part of [[Cicero]]'s estate called Tusculum, and was much given to commenting on the fact. In 1825, Bonaparte excavated the so-called [[Tusculum portrait]] of [[Julius Caesar]] at the Tusculum's [[Forum (Roman)|forum]].<ref>{{cite book | author=The J. Paul Getty Museum| title =Ancient Portraits in the J. Paul Getty Museum: Volume 1| publisher =Getty Publications| year =1987| page =24| isbn =0892360712}}</ref>

In 1823, Bonaparte was elected as a member of the [[American Philosophical Society]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=1823&year-max=1823&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=2021-04-06|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref>

==Marriages and children==
His first wife was his landlord's daughter, [[Christine Boyer]] (3 July 1771 &ndash; 14 May 1800),<ref>de Bourrienne, Louis Antoine Fauvelet and Ramsay Weston Phipps, ''Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte'', Vol.1, (Charles Scribner's Sons:New York, 1895), 100.</ref> the illiterate sister of an innkeeper of [[Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume]], whom he married on 4 May 1794 at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, and by her he had four children: 
* [[Charlotte Bonaparte Gabrielli|Filistine Charlotte then Christine Charlotte Bonaparte]] (Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, 28 February 1795 – [[Rome]], 6 May 1865). She married firstly in Rome on 27 December 1815 Mario [[Gabrielli family|Gabrielli]], Prince of Prossedi (Rome, 6 December 1773 - Rome, 18 September 1841). She married secondly secretly in 1842 Cavaliere Settimio Centamori. She had eight children by her first husband:
* a son Bonaparte ([[Augsburg]], 13 March 1796 – Augsburg, 13 March 1796);
* Victoire Gertrude Bonaparte ([[Ajaccio]], 1797 – Ajaccio, 1797);
* Christine Charlotte Alexandrine Egypta Bonaparte (Paris, 18 October 1798 – Rome, 19 May 1847); married firstly in Rome on 18 March 1818 Arvid, Count Posse ([[Sweden]], 11 June 1782 - [[Washington, D.C.]], May 1826 or [[San Antonio de Béxar]], [[Mexican Texas|Tejas]], [[Coahuila y Tejas]], 1831), son of Fredrik, Count Posse, and wife Carolina Stedt. This ended in divorce in 1824. She married secondly on 20 July 1824 [[Lord Dudley Stuart|Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart]] ([[London]], 11 January 1803 - [[Stockholm]], 17 November 1854). She had one child, a son, by her second husband.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.geni.com/people/Catherine-Christine-Elenora-Boyer/6000000006101344684 | title=Catherine Christine Elenora Boyer | date=28 April 2022 }}</ref>

His second wife was [[Alexandrine de Bleschamp]] (23 February 1778 &ndash; 12 July 1855), widow of Hippolyte Jouberthon, known as "Madame Jouberthon",<ref>Atteridge, Andrew Hilliard and Jérôme Bonaparte, ''Napoleon's brothers'', (Methuen and Co.:London, 1909), 98.</ref> whom he married in a religious ceremony on 25 May 1803 at Paris and in a civil marriage on 26 October 1803 at [[Chamant]], [[Plessis]], and by her he had ten children: 
* [[Charles Lucien Bonaparte]] ([[Paris]], 24 May 1803 &ndash; Paris, 29 July 1857), the naturalist and [[ornithology|ornithologist]].
* Laetitia Bonaparte ([[Milan]], 1 December 1804 &ndash; [[Viterbo]], 15 March 1871), married in Canino on 4 March 1821 Sir [[Thomas Wyse]] (1791 - 1862).
* Joseph Bonaparte ([[Rome]], 14 June 1806 &ndash; Rome, 15 August 1807).
* Jeanne Bonaparte (Rome, 22 July 1807 &ndash; [[Iesi]], 22 September 1829), married in Canino in June 1825 Marquess Honorato Honorati (1800 - 1856).
* [[Paul Marie Bonaparte]] ([[Canino]], 3 November 1809 &ndash; off [[Nauplia]], 7 September 1827).
* [[Louis Lucien Bonaparte]] ([[Grimley, Worcestershire|Grimley]], [[Worcestershire]], 4 January 1813 &ndash; [[Fano]], [[Ancona]], 3 November 1891). A philologist and politician, expert on the [[Basque language]].
* [[Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte]] (Rome, 11 October 1815 &ndash; [[Versailles]], 7 April 1881).
* Antoine Bonaparte ([[Frascati]], 31 October 1816 &ndash; [[Florence]], 28 March 1877), married on 9 July 1839 Marie-Anne Carolina Cardinali ([[Lucca]], 24 February 1823 - Florence, 10 October 1879), without issue.
* [[Marie Alexandrine Bonaparte]] ([[Perugia]], 10 October 1818 &ndash; Florence, 20 August 1874), married on 29 July 1836 Vincenzo Valentini, Count of Laviano (Canino, 1808 - [[Porretta Terme]], 1858).
* Constance Bonaparte ([[Bologna]], 30 January 1823 &ndash; Rome, 5 September 1876), a nun and an abbess in Rome.

==Coat of arms==
<gallery>
File:Blason fam fr Bonaparte ornamented.svg|Coat of arms of the Bonaparte family
File:Coat of Arms of Lucien Bonaparte, Roman Prince of Canino.svg|Coat of arms as Prince of Canino and Musignano
File:Coat of Arms of Lucien Bonaparte during the Hundred Days.svg|Coat of arms as a French prince during the [[Hundred Days]]
</gallery>

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==Further reading==
* Marcello Simonetta & Noga Arikha, ''Napoleon and the Rebel: A Story of Brotherhood, Passion, and Power'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) {{ISBN|978-0-23011-156-1}}

== External links ==
{{Commons category}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20040823215332/http://www.academie-francaise.fr/immortels/base/academiciens/fiche.asp?param=301 Académie Francaise: Les Immortels]: (in French)
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20011121162641/http://www.histofig.com/history/empire/personnes/france_bonaparte_lucien_en.html Lucien Bonaparte]

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{{S-ttl|title=[[Prince of Canino and Musignano|Prince of Canino]]|years=1814&ndash;1840}}
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{{S-ttl|title=[[Prince of Canino and Musignano|Prince of Musignano]]|years=1824&ndash;1840}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonaparte, Lucien}}
[[Category:1775 births]]
[[Category:1840 deaths]]
[[Category:Politicians from Ajaccio]]
[[Category:Jacobins]]
[[Category:House of Bonaparte|Lucien]]
[[Category:Princes of Canino and Musignano|Lucien]]
[[Category:Princes of France (Bonaparte)|Lucien]]
[[Category:Ambassadors of France to Spain]]
[[Category:French Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:People of the French Revolution]]
[[Category:Members of the Council of Five Hundred]]
[[Category:Expelled members of the Académie Française]]
[[Category:Members of the Sénat conservateur]]
[[Category:Members of the Chamber of Peers of the Hundred Days]]
[[Category:French interior ministers]]
[[Category:Deaths from stomach cancer]]
[[Category:Deaths from cancer in Lazio]]
[[Category:International members of the American Philosophical Society]]