Napoleon Louis Bonaparte

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.^[1] 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.

Ancestry

References

• Napoleon Louis Bonaparte at Find a Grave