#count leon

[empirearchives]

I found this old book about one of Napoleon’s sons (Charles Léon Denuelle), and the cover is a picture of him I’ve never seen before!

Portrait by Jacques-Louis David when Leon was around 17.

[napoleondidthat]

Did Napoleon have an illegitimate children? I remember reading somewhere that he had an illegitimate son that had children. Is this true?

Oh yes he did.

Here’s a brief summery of them:

1. Count Leon--He is the son of Elenore Denuelle who is mentioned being a person in the household of Caroline, Napoleon’s sister. Caroline played match-maker in order to try to prove Napoleon was able to father children and to get Josephine out of the way. This wasn’t some grand love affair, more like an experiment to see if she could get pregnant.. She did. There has been some speculation that the child could have been Murat’s as apparently he was also “seeing” her. However, Napoleon accepted the child as his own, made him a count and it’s said that as he grew he resembled Napoleon. He turned out to be a bit of a scoundrel, had a huge gambling problem and would pester his cousin, Napoleon III, for payment of his debts and other things. 

2. Alexandre Walewski--He is the son of Napoleon’s love affair with Marie Walewska, nicknamed Napoleon’s “Polish Wife”. They met during Napoleon’s campaign through Poland, she started out as a patriot who had a bit of hero worship of Napoleon and was begging him to help free Poland. Napoleon made promises to that he never followed through on. He immediately wanted her for his mistress, she balked because she was already married to Count Walweski who was several decades older than her (she was 18 and he was maybe in his 60s pushing 70s). They also had a son together AND she was also Catholic. However, Napoleon pursued her, conquered her, and she seemed to fall genuinely in love with him. She followed him around and was eventually installed in Napoleon’s and Josephine’s first home in Paris. Count Walweski accepted the son as his own, he knew of the affair and seems to have even given it his blessing. Alexandre grew up in Poland in the Walewski family. Marie married a distant cousin of the Bonapartes, a man named Ornano and died before Napoleon after giving birth to her third son from kidney failure. Alexandre would join Napoleon III’s cabinet as a minister of foreign affairs and later minister of state. Ironically, he was friendly with Wellington and walked in his funeral representing France. He did resemble his father, was said to have Napoleon’s voice and never really seemed to care about his father’s “greatness”. A famous anecdote says that one woman stopped him at a reception and said “I knew your father, he was a great man!” And Alexandre replied “Oh, I did not know that you were acquainted with the late Count Walewski.” He had several different orders and was created a duke.  He married twice, first to the daughter of the English Earl of Sandwich who died, later to Mlle. Ricci who also apparently was a mistress to Napoleon III.

3. Madame Pellapra (?) This woman claimed to be the daughter of Napoleon and there are historians who both acknowledge that she is and other’s that don’t seem to think the claim is legit.

4. Napoleone Montholon: There is some strong evidence that Napoleon took Montholon’s wife, Albine, as mistress on Saint Helena. She did become pregnant on the island and had a daughter whom she named Napoleone.

There of course could be others that went unrecorded.

Here is a link to a post I did on the Walewski branch of Napoleon’s decendants.

https://napoleondidthat.tumblr.com/post/176541583836/napoleons-descendants-walewski-family

[napoleondidthat]

Is there any current living direct descendants of Napoleon? All of the currently living relatives that I've heard of are descendants of his siblings, but maybe I've just skipped over something and never noticed.

There are. The King of Rome did not leave any heirs, though there was gossip around the time that the King of Rome did father a son. This turned out to be just gossip and maybe a bit of wishful thinking. However, Count Leon did have children and his descendants exist to this day. The latest Count only had a daughter who had a daughter so there was fear the name would die out though the descendants would continue on. There are also direct descendants from Marie Walewska. Alexandre Walewski went on to have seven children. The Colonna-Walewski family still exists to this day, some of them behind a popular makeup line.

Why you don’t hear of them is because they are an “illegitimate” line and therefore sometimes discounted.

Also...there is always the possibility there were other children and descendants that slipped through the cracks. Some historians do count Madame Montholon’s daughter, Napoleone, as a child she had with Napoleon. There is also another daughter, Madame Pellapra I believe her name is, is a daughter of Napoleon’s.