Zénaïde Laetitia Julie Bonaparte, Princess of Canino and Musignano (8 July 1801 – 8 August 1854) was the elder daughter of Joseph Bonaparte and Julie Clary, and thus the niece of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the wife of naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte, who was also her cousin. She joined her father in exile for several years in Bordentown, New Jersey.
Biography
When she was 14, in 1815, Napoleon offered Zénaïde in marriage to King Ferdinand VII of Spain, but the offer was refused.Glover p. 295 There had been earlier plans to marry Zénaïde to the son of then marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, Oscar, who were also her cousin, but the plans were later abandoned.
After the fall of her uncle Emperor Napoleon in 1815, her father moved to America and purchased Point Breeze, an estate on the Delaware River in Bordentown, New Jersey. Zénaïde and her sister, however, stayed with their mother in Europe. They lived in Frankfurt and Brussels from 1815 to 1821, and then in Florence.
On 29 June 1822, in Brussels, she married her cousin Charles Lucien Bonaparte, son of her uncle Lucien. Her father Joseph had suggested marriage to his wife when Zénaïde was only five; the idea was to carry on the Napoleonic succession (a return to power was always anticipated) by marrying his two daughters to sons of two of his brothers.Stroud, pp. 25–29
The wedding was met with surprisingly little fanfare, perhaps because Zénaïde's mother was outraged at the excessive sum of the dowry (730,000 francs, which was unreasonable considering that Lucien's villa in Rome had cost only 150,000), which had strained her resources.
In 1823, after emigrating to the United States, she and her husband resided in the Lake House on her father's Point Breeze estate.Point Breeze, National Gallery of Art. Accessed 12 May 2024. "In addition to the new mansion, Bonaparte built several other dwellings on the property. The largest of these was a three-story Lake House, erected near the new mansion probably in the spring of 1820. Bonaparte's daughter Zénaïde (1801–1854) resided in the Lake House with her husband, the ornithologist Charles-Lucien Bonaparte (1803–1857), after they emigrated in 1823."
Charles was an ornithologist (who named the genus Zenaida after her). They had twelve children, listed below.
Issue Name Date of birth Date of deathJoseph Lucien Charles Napoléon Bonaparte, 3rd Prince of Canino and Musignano13 February 1824Alexandrine Gertrude Zénaïde Bonaparte9 June 1826 Lucien Louis Joseph Napoléon Bonaparte, 4th Prince of Canino and Musignano15 November 1828Julie Charlotte Bonaparte (married Alessandro del Gallo Marquess of Roccagiovine)5 June 1830Charlotte Honorine Joséphine Pauline Bonaparte (married Pietro Primoli Count of Foglia, had two sons: Joseph and Louis)4 March 1832 Léonie Stéphanie Elise Bonaparte18 September 1833Marie Désirée Eugénie Joséphine Philomène Bonaparte (married Count Paolo Campello della Spina)18 March 1835Augusta Amélie Maximilienne Jacqueline Bonaparte (married Placido Gabrielli, son of Charlotte Bonaparte, Princess Gabrielli)9 November 1836Napoléon Charles Grégoire Jacques Philippe Bonaparte, 5th Prince of Canino and Musignano5 February 1839Bathilde Aloïse Léonie Bonaparte (married Louis, Comte de Cambacérès)26 November 1840Albertine Marie Thérèse Bonaparte12 March 1842Charles Albert Bonaparte22 March 1843
Ancestry
References
Bibliography Glover, Michael, The Peninsular War 1807–1814. London: Penguin Books, 2001. Stroud, Patricia Tyson. The Emperor of Nature: Charles-Lucien Bonaparte and His World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. .
External links