1848.

In the year 1785, there died at Montpel-, lier, in the prime of life, a Corsican lawyer, who, in his early youth, had fought by the side of Paoli in the war of Corsican independence, but had afterwards submitted to the fortune that had attached him, together with about 150,000 persons, his fellow-islanders, all of Italian origin, as subjects to the crown of France. His place of residence was the town of Ajaccio, in his native island, where he held the post of assessor to the judicial court; but business obliged him occasionally to visit France, and it was during one of those visits that he died. He left a widow, still a young and beautiful woman, and eight children, of whom the eldest was but seventeen years, and the youngest only three months old. Left in somewhat straitened circumstances, the chief reliance of the family was in a rich old uncle, an ecclesiastic in

the Corsican Church. Two of the children, indeed, had already, in a manner, been provided for. The eldest, a son, had begun the study of the law. The second, a youth of sixteen, had completed his education at the military academies of Brienne and Paris, and had just received, or was on the point of receiving, a sub-lieutenancy of artillery in the French king's army. It was on this young soldier, rather than on his elder brother, that the hopes of the family were fixed. Even the poor father's ravings on his death-bed, it is said, were all about his absent boy, Napoleon, and a "great sword" that he was to bequeath to him.

Sixty-four years have elapsed since thentwo generations and part of a third-and what changes have they not seen in the fortunes of the Corsican family! In the first, issuing from their native island, like some

band of old Heracleida, and pushing, with their military brother at their head, into the midst of a Revolution that was then convulsing Europe, these half-Italian orphans, whose dialect no one could recognize, cut their way to the centre of the tumult, seize the administration, and are distributed as kings and princes among the western nations. In the second, shattered and thrown down as by a stroke of Apocalyptic vengeance, they are dispersed as wanderers over the civilized world, to increase their numbers, and form connections everywhere. And now, again, at the beginning of a third, there seems to be a gathering of them towards the old centre, as if for a new function in regard to the future. Let us glance for a little at these successive chapters of a most extraordinary family-history, not yet ended.

The outbreak of the Revolution in 178990 found the Bonapartes all living together at Ajaccio-the eldest, Giuseppe, or Joseph, in his twenty-third year, a lawyer entering lawyer entering into practice; the second, Napolione or Napoleon, now twenty-one years of age, a lieutenant of artillery on leave of absence; the third, Luciano, or Lucien, a hot-headed young man, five years younger than Napoleon, (one or two intermediate children having died,) and fresh from the College of Autun; the fourth a daughter, MarianaAnna, afterwards called Eliza, then in her fifteenth year; next to her, Luigi or Louis, a boy of twelve or thirteen; and lastly, the three youngest, still mere infants, Maria-Annonciada, afterwards called Pauline, MariaCarolina or Caroline, and Gierolamo or Jerome. In the same house with the Bonapartes, and about three years older than Joseph, lived the Abbé Fesch, a half-brother of Madame Bonaparte. All the family, as indeed almost all the Corsicans at that time, were admirers of the Revolution; but the most fervid revolutionist of all was Lucien, who was the juvenile prodigy of the family, and whose speeches, delivered at the meetings of a popular society that had been established at Ajaccio, were the delight of the town. Joseph, older and steadier, took his part, too, in the general bustle; while the lieutenant amused his idleness by long walks about the island, and by writing various essays and sketches, among which is mentioned a History of the Revolutions of Corsica, a manuscript copy of which was forwarded to Mirabeau.

At the second great epoch of the Revolution (1792-3) the Bonapartes were again assembled at Ajaccio, Napoleon having just

returned from that memorable visit to Paris, during which he and Bourrienne, sauntering through the streets, saw the mob attack the Tuileries. At this time the Corsicans were in a fever of excitement, having just received back among them their long-lost idol Paoli, whom the course of events had permitted to return from his exile in England, and whom the French King and National Assembly had invested with the supreme authority in his native island. To the Bonapartes the return of the old friend of their father was particularly welcome; and Joseph and Napoleon willingly gave him their help in the government of the island, while young Lucien, who was his chief favorite, went to live with him as an adopted son. But the progress of the Revolution had stirred strange thoughts in the heart of the veteran. Disgusted with the conduct of the Parisian leaders, he was secretly planning a revolt under the patronage of England, the result of which should be the permanent emancipation, as he hoped, of his darling island from all foreign thraldom. Accordingly, in January, 1793, the Corsicans, under Paoli, again unfurled their old flag of independence. But a movement like this, though it might carry away the rude peasantry of the island, could not draw with it educated young men like the Bonapartes, accustomed to see the future of Corsica only in that of France. Exposed, therefore, to the vengeance of Paoli and his adherents, they were obliged hurriedly to escape from the island altogether, and to cast themselves, as refugees of the Revolution, on the hospitality of their adopted country. What a waif was then cast ashore on France in that Corsican lady and her eight children!

Marseilles became the head-quarters of the Bonaparte family during the Reign of Terror. Here, from 1793 to 1796, they were severally to be either seen or heard of-Joseph, employed as a commissary of war, living in the town, wooing, and at last (1794) marrying a Mademoiselle Clary, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, another of whose daughters became the wife of a young officer, named Bernadotte; Napoleon, occasionally at Marseilles, but usually absent in Paris, or elsewhere, already a general of brigade, having been raised to that rank for his services at the seige of Toulon, yet grumbling at his poverty and inactivity, and thinking his brother Joseph "a lucky rogue" in having made so good a match; Lucien, a young firebrand, known over the whole district as "Brutus Bonaparte," and extremely

popular as a Republican orator, first at Marseilles itself, and afterwards at the small town of St. Maximin, some leagues distant, where he held a civil commission under the Convention, and where, in 1795, he married Mademoiselle Boyer, the sister of an innkeeper; and lastly, the five younger members of the family living under the same roof with their mother and the Abbé Fesch, and supported jointly by Napoleon and Joseph.

The fall of Robespierre and his party (July, 1794) was a temporary blow to the fortunes of the Bonapartes, connected as they were, on the whole, with that side of the Revolution. General Bonaparte, arrested, and, though almost immediately liberated, still suspected and degraded, thought of quitting France to seek employment in the Turkish service. His brothers Joseph and Lucien lost their appointments and shared the same disgrace. It was not till after the famous 13th Vendemiaire, (4th October, 1795,) when Napoleon blew the insurgent mob to pieces with grapeshot, and thus established the government of the Directory, that the fortunes of the Bonapartes were decided. Appointed in consequence to the supreme command of the army of Italy, Napoleon was able instantly to provide for three of his brothers. Joseph and Lucien received important civil appointments in connection with the army; and young Louis, after a short training at the artillery school of Chalons, was to go to serve under his brother in Italy. To these members of his family, General Bonaparte, before his departure for Italy, in March, 1796, was able to introduce, in the character of relatives, three other persons, whose names were thenceforward to be conspicuous in his history-his bride Josephine, the widow of the Viscount de Beauharnais, then in her thirtythird year, and consequently six years his senior; and that lady's two children by her former marriage—a boy, Eugene, aged about sixteen, and a girl, Hortense, aged thirteen years. By the splendid successes of Bonaparte in Italy and in Egypt, (1796-9,) a still higher position was earned for his family in the public regard. Corsica, abandoned by the English in 1796, and immediately recovered by the French, was proud to claim as her sons men of such note in Paris as the Bonapartes. In the Council of Five Hundred, both Joseph and Lucien sat as deputies from their native island. Here, partly from their own activity, and partly from their connection with the great General of the Republic, they became at once important men; and Joseph,

on his return from an embassy to the Papal States in 1798, was elected to the secretaryship of the Assembly. The same year (1797) that saw the two brothers in the Council of Five Hundred, saw two of their sisters married-the eldest, Eliza, to Felix Bacchiochi, a Corsican of good family, but then only a captain of infantry, and, as Bonaparte thought, not a suitable match for his sister; and the second, Pauline, who was the sprightliest and most beautiful of the three, to General Leclerc, an excellent officer of humble origin, who had become enamored of her during a military mission to Marseilles, and who carried her off from hundreds of despairing lovers. Eliza and Pauline being thus married, and Louis being absent in Italy, where he served along with young Eugene Beauharnais on the staff of his brother, there remained under their mother's roof at Marseilles only Caroline and Jerome, the former about seventeen, and the latter about fifteen years of age.

After the Revolution of the 18th Brumaire, (9th October, 1799,) the various members of the Bonaparte family were all re-united in Paris round the persons of the First Consul. Madame Bonaparte, with Caroline and Jerome, came up from Marseilles in the winter; and with them, or about the same time, came, infinitely to the annoyance of the First Consul, hosts of unknown relations by marriage-Bacchiochis, Boyers, Clarys, Leclercs, and other odd people from the country-all building high hopes on their connection with the great man that had become the head of the State.

The position of the Bonapartes during the Consulate was that of the first family in France. Joseph, performing the functions of Councillor of State and Tribune, was intrusted by his brother with various important diplomatic commissions, and, among them, with the business of arranging the Concordat with the Pope in 1801. The publication in 1799 of a romance called "Moina," had already made him known as an author. Lucien, who had also just made his first literary attempt in a romance called "Stellina," published in the same year, was appointed Minister of the Interior, superseding in that office the celebrated mathematician, Laplace. As Minister of the Interior he displayed very great talent and activity; and discourses delivered by him on various public occasions during his brother's Consulate may yet be read with interest. To his two brothers-inlaw, Bacchiochi and Leclerc, the First Consul also behaved handsomely. Bacchiochi

was raised to a colonelcy, and marked out for farther promotion, more for his wife's sake than his own; and Leclerc was first appointed to the command of the army of Portugal, and afterwards (1801) sent out as Governor of the West Indian island of Hayti or St. Domingo, which had been in a state of insurrection since the emancipation of the blacks in 1794. In this expedition Leclerc was accompanied by his wife, the beautiful Pauline Bonaparte, accounts of whose fêtes, balls al fresco, and magnificent gracefulness, mingle, in the French narratives of the expedition, with the horrors of the yellow fever and the massacres of negro warfare. Meanwhile, Pauline's younger sister, Caroline, was given in marriage at home to a dashing cavalry officer in her brother's army, named Joachim Murat, the son of an innkeeper at Perigord. The history of Louis Bonaparte under the Consulship of his brother was a singular one. Sent by his brother from Italy with dispatches to the Directory, in 1796, he had (being then in his nineteenth year) met at Paris Mademoiselle de Beauharnais, the daughter of an émigré Marquis, a relative of Josephine's first husband, and had fallen violently in love with her. Informed of the circumstance by an old friend of the family, who feared that a marriage relationship with a Royalist house might prove injurious to the interests of the Republican general, Bonaparte, to break off the connection, had hastily removed Louis from Paris on a pretended military mission to Lyons. Neither this absence, however, nor the subsequent campaign in Egypt, could remove the impression that had been made on the young man's heart; and Mademoiselle de Beauharnais having been shortly afterwards married to M. de Lavalette, frustrated passion resulted, in a character naturally pensive and affectionate, in a settled and unconquerable melancholy. The entire subsequent conduct of Louis towards his brother was a silent reproach for that one act of fraternal cruelty; and Napoleon, on his side, conscious of the wrong he had done, tried to atone for it by the peculiar kindness with which he ever afterwards treated the unfortunate Louis. After having served as a dragoon officer against the Chouan insurgents of La Vendée, Louis was recalled to Paris. Here Josephine, who had long desired a counterpoise in her husband's family against the influence of his brothers Joseph and Lucien, which she knew to be hostile to her, worked hard to bring about a marriage between him and her daughter Hortense. The voung man, still full of his first love, avoided

all advances; nor was Hortense more willing, her heart having been already given to the handsome Duroc, the favorite aide-decamp of Napoleon. The manoeuvres of Josephine, however, prevailed over all obstacles; a ball at Malmaison brought affairs to a point; and on the 4th of January, 1802, was celebrated, amid the rejoicings of the Court, this marriage of state-arrangement— a marriage, on both sides, of reluctance and tears. Hortense's brother, Eugene Beauharnais, had, in the mean-time, notwithstanding his youth, been raised by his all-powerful step-father, to the rank of general; while Jerome Bonaparte, a young scapegrace of sixteen, had entered the naval service, and having gone out, as a ship's lieutenant, in the expedition to St. Domingo under his brotherin-law Leclerc, had, on his return, been sent back, as captain of a frigate, to cruise between Martinique and Tobago. Meanwhile Madame Lætitia, the mother of the Bonapartes, was living in Paris, enjoying the success of so many that were dear to her. Even her half-brother, the Abbé Fesch of Ajaccio, had not been forgotten; ecclesiastical forms having been restored in France, Napoleon took advantage of having a relative in holy orders, and, through his influence with the Pope, had him created first (1802) a Bishop, and afterwards (1803) a Cardinal.

The accession of Napoleon to the imperial dignity, (18th May, 1804,) opened a new era in the history of the Bonaparte family. Civil titles and decorations having been restored, the relatives of the Emperor naturally formed the nucleus of the new aristocracy, that was created in France. Joseph, now thirty-seven years of age, and who was already senator, and grand-officer of the Legion of Honor, was named Prince of France, and Grand Elector of the Empire. Lucien, who was also grand-officer of the Legion of Honor, would have had the same honors as Joseph, had he not about this time incurred the displeasure of his peremptory brother. Napoleon had never been satisfied with the marriage that Lucien had contracted in his youth with Mademoiselle Boyer, the innkeeper's sister of Saint-Maximin, and when, after that lady's death, Lucien again frustrated the scheme of a high alliance, by marrying (1803) the beautiful Madame Jourberteau, a young widow whose husband had died at Saint Domingo of yellow fever, the rage of the Emperor knew no bounds. Lucien, who was moreover sufficiently high-spirited to differ from his brother occasionally in matters of policy, quitted France altogether, and

(1804) took up his residence in Rome, where he was kindly received by Pope Pius VII., who had previously contracted a personal regard for him. In Rome or its neighborhood, accordingly, Lucien Bonaparte continued to reside during the first years of the Empire, a man of Republican sentiments and liberal tastes, patronizing the arts in a munificent way, talking somewhat freely of his brother, and known to be engaged on a great epic poem in the French language, the subject of which was the Life of Charlemagne, and, in particular, the connection of that hero with the early Papacy. More obedient to his imperial brother than the literary and republican Lucien, Louis Bonaparte was created Prince and Constable of France; Cardinal Fesch received the Archbishopric of Lyons; Eugene Beauharnais was made a prince; Murat also became a prince, and a marshal of the Empire; Bacchiochi shared his wife's dignity as a French princess; and Pauline Bonaparte who had returned a widow from Saint Domingo, where the yellow fever had carried off Leclerc, and who had been given in second marriage (Nov. 1803) to the Italian Prince Camille de Borghese, became also a French princess in her own right, and continued to reside in Paris, the delight of the salons, and the pride of her imperial brother, whom she alternately pleased and provoked by her haughty sisterly ways. A separate establishment, with secretaries, chamberlains, &c., was also assigned to the mother of the Emperor, or, as she was now called, MADAME MERE; and with this was conjoined, by way of occupation, a special office created expressly for her by the admirable good taste of Napoleon, and designated the Protectress-ship-general of Charitable Institutions. Lucien was not the only one of her sons for whom the poor lady had to intercede with the Emperor. The young sailor, Jerome, the Benjamin of the family, with whose conduct Napoleon had more than once found fault, was again in disgrace. Driven from his cruising station at Martinique by English vessels, he had touched at the North American coast, and had there (1803) married a Miss Elizabeth Patterson, the daughter of a Baltimore merchant. When the young couple came to Europe in 1805, Napoleon would not receive the bride as a member of the imperial family; and, at length, not without opposition on the part of the young sailor, the marriage was annulled after one or two children had been born.

The same Senatus-Consultum that raised Napoleon to the Empire, provided for the

succession in case of his death. By this de-. cree the imperial crown was settled, first, on Napoleon, and his legitimate male descendants in the order of primogeniture, to the perpetual exclusion of females. Secondly, failing these, on any son or grandson of any of his brothers that Napoleon might adopt, and on the heirs-male of such son or grandson. Thirdly, on Napoleon's eldest brother Prince Joseph Bonaparte, and on his heirsmale in due order; and fourthly, on Napoleon's third brother, Prince Louis Bonaparte, and on his heirs-male in the same order. The exclusion of Lucien and Jerome shows that they were not in such favor with Napoleon as the other two brothers. When, on the 27th November, 1804, the decree was referred for ratification to the French people in their departments, the result was as follows: total number of votes, registered 3,524,254; affirmative votes, 3,521,675 ; negative votes, 2579.

Another stage still was in reserve in the career of the Bonapartes. A succession of victories and conquests (1805-10) made Napoleon master of continental Europe from the Atlantic on the one side to and beyond the Danube on the other. Here again his relatives and friends were of signal assistance to him. So long as he was only Emperor of France, they had formed but the nucleus of a nation's aristocracy; but now, distributed over a wider space, and bulking individually larger, they were to fulfil his designs as vassal kings and princes among foreign populations.

The following was the manner in which the various members of the Bonaparte family were distributed over Europe during the plenitude of the imperial power. To Eugene Beauharnais was assigned the vice-royalty during Napoleon's life, with the subsequent possession in full, of the so-called kingdom of Northern Italy. To Joseph Bonaparte was assigned (1806) the kingdom of the Two Sicilies; but afterwards, (1808,) greatly to the regret of the Neapolitans, to whom he had rendered himself dear by his really efficient and conscientious government, Joseph was transferred to the less stable throne of Spain. He was succeeded on the throne of the Sicilies by his brother-in-law Murat, whom Napoleon had already created Grand Duke of Berg; nor did the Neapolitans suffer from the change, for Murat and his wife Caroline Bonaparte, fulfilled the duties of king and queen better than any royal pair, their predecessors excepted, that had occupied the Neapolitan throne within recollection. In the parts of Italy that lay be