Pauline Bonaparte

• 1. Introduction

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  Pauline Bonaparte was born on the 20th of October 1780 in Ajaccio, Corsica, into a family that was, at that moment, still firmly on the margins of history. Her father, Carlo Buonaparte, served as Corsica's representative to the court of King Louis XVI. Her brother Napoleon was one of eight children. Nothing about that island household suggested the extraordinary arc that lay ahead. By the time Pauline died on the 9th of June 1825, she had lived through a revolution, a colonial war, two marriages, exile, and the collapse of an empire. She had been the sovereign Duchess of Guastalla, the princess consort of Sulmona and Rossano, and reportedly the only Bonaparte sibling willing to follow Napoleon into his island exile. How did a girl from a poverty-stricken household in Corsica become one of the most talked-about women in Napoleonic Europe? And what does her story reveal about power, loyalty, and survival when everything a family built falls apart?

• 2. Poverty and Displacement

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  Following Carlo Buonaparte's death in 1785, the family fell into poverty. The children were young, the household income uncertain, and Corsica itself was about to become a dangerous place. In the summer of 1793, Pauline's brother Lucien made seditious remarks at the local Jacobin chapter, and the entire Bonaparte family was forced to flee to the French mainland. On the continent, she came to be called "Paulette," a softer French rendering of the Italian "Paolina" she had grown up with. The British capture of Corsica in 1794 cut off income the family had relied on from their vineyards and other island holdings. Their situation grew so dire that the Bonaparte women were reported to have washed clothes for payment. Even so, they received a stipend from the French government, as did other Corsican refugees. Their landing point was Toulon, from which they moved to Marseille. It was there that Napoleon, already a military figure, introduced Pauline to Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron, the proconsul of Marseille. Napoleon had intended them to marry, but their mother, Letizia, objected. Despite the fact that Pauline loved Fréron, Napoleon arranged a different match entirely.

• 3. The Leclerc Marriage

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  On the 14th of June 1797, Pauline was married to General Charles Leclerc in French-occupied Milan, a union arranged by Napoleon rather than chosen by Pauline. Napoleon then departed for Paris, leaving Leclerc as commander-in-chief of the French army in Italy. Less than a year later, on the 20th of April 1798, Pauline gave birth to a boy she named Dermide Louis Napoleon. Leclerc marked the occasion by acquiring a property outside Novellara worth 160,000 French francs. Ill-health forced Leclerc out of his military post in October of that same year, and the family was shuffled between postings: first Paris, then Brittany. In Paris, Pauline found a social footing through Laure de Permond, the future Duchesse d'Abrantès, who welcomed her into a salon on the rue Saint-Croix. Napoleon's Coup of Brumaire in November 1799 transformed the political landscape entirely. He deposed the Directory and declared himself First Consul, and his sister's husband was now directly tied to the most powerful figure in France.

• 4. Saint-Domingue

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  Saint-Domingue, the French colony in the West Indies that would become modern-day Haiti, had been in rebellion against France since 1791. Napoleon organized a military expedition to restore French authority, put Leclerc at its head as Governor-General, and the family set sail from Brest on the 14th of December 1801. Leclerc's fleet totaled 74 ships. After a 45-day journey, the fleet reached Le Cap harbour, and Leclerc immediately demanded that General Christophe, commanding a force of 5,000 soldiers, surrender Le Cap to French authority. Christophe refused and razed the town. Pauline waited aboard the flagship l'Océan with their son while the battle unfolded. In a letter dated the 5th of March, Leclerc wrote to Napoleon that the "disastrous events in the midst of which she found herself wore her down to the point of making her ill." Leclerc eventually secured the capitulation of the rebel leader Toussaint L'Ouverture in May. The celebrations that followed were brief. Yellow fever swept through the colony, killing 25 generals and 25,000 soldiers. Leclerc had initially pledged that slavery, abolished by the Jacobin republic in 1794, would remain abolished. But word reached the colony that the French government had re-established slavery in neighbouring Guadeloupe, and the indigenous residents planned an insurrection for the 16th of September. Black troops in Leclerc's own army defected, leaving the Governor-General with only around 2,000 men against a rebel force of roughly 10,000. Pauline, meanwhile, could no longer walk without difficulty and spent several hours a day confined to a reclining position. Both she and Dermide suffered bouts of yellow fever. Leclerc gave Sergeant Jacques de Norvin standing orders to remove Pauline from the island at a moment's notice if necessary. She herself showed no eagerness to leave. When Leclerc tried to send her back to Paris in August, she consented only on the condition that he give her 100,000 francs. He refused, and she chose to stay, telling him bluntly that unlike in Paris, in Saint-Domingue she reigned first, "like Josephine." To occupy herself she compiled a collection of local flora and built a menagerie of native animals. On the 22nd of October 1802, Leclerc fell ill. A military doctor diagnosed a fever caused by the hardships he had endured; biographer Flora Fraser believed the symptoms were consistent with yellow fever. He died on the 1st of November. Seven days later, Pauline, Dermide, and Leclerc's remains were hastily taken back to France.

• 5. The Borghese Marriage

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  Pauline arrived at the Bay of Toulon on the 1st of January 1803. That same day she wrote to her brother: "I have brought with me the remains of my poor Leclerc. Pity poor Pauline, who is truly unhappy." On the 11th of February she arrived in Paris, where Napoleon arranged for her to stay with their brother Joseph. Parisian rumour claimed she had smuggled gold and jewels back inside Leclerc's sarcophagus; this was untrue. She did inherit 700,000 francs in liquid capital and assets from his estate. Napoleon, unwilling to let her remain unmarried, attempted to betroth her to Francesco Melzi d'Eril, the Duke of Lodi and Vice-President of the Napoleonic Republic of Italy. That plan failed. Pope Pius VII's envoy, Giovanni Battista Caprara, proposed Camillo Borghese, the 6th Prince of Sulmona, a Roman noble. Napoleon calculated that the match would help consolidate ties with French-occupied Italy, where hostility to France ran deep. Pressure from brothers Joseph and Lucien added to the push. The marriage contract gave Camillo a dowry of 500,000 francs, while Pauline received jewelry valued at 300,000 francs along with use of the Borghese family diamonds. Caprara married the pair on the 28th of August 1803, without Napoleon's knowledge. Napoleon had wanted a November wedding, to respect mourning protocols. When he discovered Pauline had acted without him, he refused to acknowledge her new title, telling her plainly that there was no princess where he was. A civil ceremony in November confirmed the marriage. The family arrived in Rome on the 14th of November. Pauline, a minor noble from Corsica, needed instruction in the customs of Roman society; she received formal tutorship in deportment and dancing. Biographer William Carlton observed that without Napoleon's political standing she would never have secured such an advantageous match. Her son Dermide, always a delicate child, died on the 14th of August 1804 at the Aldobrandini villa in Frascati after a violent fever and convulsions. Three years later his remains were moved to the park of the Château de Montgobert, to rest alongside his father.

• 6. Loyalty Under Pressure

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  In 1806, Napoleon elevated Pauline to sovereign Princess and Duchess of Guastalla. She did not hold the duchy for long: she sold it to Parma for six million francs, retaining only the title. Her relations with Napoleon became strained over her hostility toward his second wife, Empress Marie Louise, and Pauline briefly fell from favor. When Napoleon's own fortunes collapsed, that earlier friction proved largely irrelevant. She liquidated all of her assets and used the proceeds to improve his conditions in exile on Elba. She was the only Bonaparte sibling to make that journey. Her Paris home, the Hôtel de Charost, was sold to the British government, which used it as the official residence of the Duke of Wellington during his tenure as British Ambassador to France. The house still serves as the home of the British ambassador today. After Waterloo, Pauline moved to Rome and found protection under Pope Pius VII, the same man who had once been Napoleon's prisoner. Her mother, Letizia, was also in Rome at that time, living at a palace on the Piazza Venezia. Pauline settled in a villa between the Porta Pia and the Porta Salaria, a house that came to be called Villa Paolina in her name, decorated in the Egyptomania style she favored.

• 7. Final Years

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  Pauline was of frail health for much of her life, probably due to salpingitis. Her husband Camillo had moved to Florence to put distance between them and maintained a ten-year relationship with a mistress. Even so, Pauline persuaded Pope Pius VII to convince the prince to take her back. That reconciliation came just three months before her death. She died on the 9th of June 1825, at the age of forty-four, in Camillo's Palazzo Salviati-Borghese in Florence. The official cause given was a tumor on the stomach, though pulmonary tuberculosis has also been named as the likely culprit. Across the years since, her image has appeared in more than a dozen films and miniseries, from a 1927 silent film to a 2019 video game, a consistency that points to how stubbornly the figure of Napoleon's youngest willing companion in exile refuses to fade.