In the early morning of 25 July 1815, as the small American brigantineCommerceattempted to slip away on a favorable tide from the coast of France just over a month after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, the British warshipBacchusloomed out of the fog and blocked its passage. Officers of the English ship came aboard to examine the passports of a Spaniard, an American, and a Monsieur Surviglieri, who kept to his cabin. As the officers knew that the deposed emperor Napoleon was already aboard theBellerophon, headed for England, they did not press their investigation of the mysterious...

Joseph’s home for most of his time in the United States, the estate of Point Breeze, in central New Jersey, was actually his second land purchase in America. He already owned a large tract of land in northern New York State before he arrived in the New World. In 1814 when James Donatien Le Ray was visiting his legendary château de Chaumont in the Loire Valley (once the home of Diane de Poitiers and Marie de Medici), he learned that Joseph Bonaparte, a fugitive, was across the Loire River at the château de Blois. Joseph was in flight from the...

In the winter of 1818, Joseph received a letter from Count Emmanuel Augustin Dieudonnê de Las Cases, who had just been hospitably received by Joseph’s wife, Julie, in Frankfurt. Las Cases, a French historian to whom Napoleon had dictated part of his memoirs and the emperor’s favorite of all the devotees who accompanied him to St. Helena, had been abruptly sent away by the British authorities for smuggling correspondence off the island. He had been deported to the Cape of Good Hope, he told Joseph, and would have written “Votre Majeste” sooner had it not been for the strict surveillance...

Joseph Bonaparte’s male friends and acquaintances in America represented amazing crosscurrents of contemporary political, social, and military history. For the most part they were particularly erudite men. One American who spoke French and became a close friend, William Short (fig. 7), had been Thomas Jefferson’s secretary when Jefferson was minister to France from 1794 to 1798. Short also fell in love with a Frenchwoman, Rosalie de la Rochefoucauld, and their intense affair lasted seven years, although they never married.¹ He would no doubt have been sympathetic concerning Joseph Bonaparte’saffaires de coeur. Another French-speaking American was Nicholas Biddle, an important...

The ex-king’s elegant New Jersey estate, Point Breeze, would in time evolve into a showplace to which groups of people would travel by steamboat from Philadelphia on Sundays and certain holidays in order to see the collection of great European paintings and statues that Joseph Bonaparte had shipped from abroad. The entire New Jersey legislature even came upon occasion (fig. 11). Joseph’s wife and agents overseas had arranged to send these magnificent works of art, usually by way of Stephen Girard’s ships. A memorandum of 1818 in Joseph’s handwriting lists nineteen cases of paintings and engravings, furniture, rugs, candelabra,girandoles...

However much he enjoyed his wilderness domain in New York State for hunting and summer recreation, the property Joseph cared most about was Point Breeze and its development into a picturesque landscape garden and park (fig. 18). When the ex-king came to America, he already had a background in garden art at his two European estates, Mortefontaine in France and Prangins in Switzerland. Although he lived at Prangins only from 1814 to 1815, he had accomplished much in the way of landscape improvement. But since he had lived off and on at Mortefontaine from 1798 until his flight from France...

One of Joseph’s principal concerns at this time was the suffering of his brother Napoleon. In the winter of 1818, Joseph had received a letter from the Count de Las Cases: “Sire, I heard after I had been torn away from your august brother that he was extremely ill, according to all reports. But although in bad health, his spirits were unmoved [impassible] and he has raised himself above his adversities and harmful treatment.”¹ General Bertrand, who would stay with Napoleon until his death, had written that the emperor suffered from a liver ailment, “a mortal illness in this unhealthy...

When theRuth and Marywith Charlotte Bonaparte aboard sailed up the Delaware and docked in Philadelphia, Clara Mickle, niece of the captain, was also on the wharf. In a letter, young Clara described the thrill of witnessing, with a host of other sightseers, a real princess step down a gangplank carpeted all the way to her waiting carriage. (Charlotte and Zênaïde both had the title of princess since their father had been a king.) To her observer, Charlotte appeared very young (perhaps because she was so petite), vivacious, and delighted to see such a welcoming crowd (fig. 20). Clara...

Regardless of her husband’s pro forma entreaties, Julie was not with Zénaïde when, on 8 September, she arrived in New York aboard the American shipFalconwith her new husband and a suite of eight persons. Her husband was also her first cousin, Charles-Lucien Bonaparte, Lucien’s son. The couple had been married in Brussels a year earlier on 29 June 1822 and then had spent most of the year in Rome (fig. 26). The ocean crossing from Antwerp to New York had been long and turbulent and Zénaïde had suffered a great deal, especially because she was four months pregnant....

The first of August 1824, Charlotte boarded the American shipCrisisbound for London. From there she would go on to Brussels. Much to her regret at leaving the lively, stimulating household at Point Breeze, Charlotte had two reasons for returning to Europe: her duty to her mother, whose health was as unsteady as ever, and her impending marriage to her cousin Napoleon-Louis Bonaparte. Joseph must have particularly regretted her leaving, perhaps because she had a more adventuresome and romantic temperament than Zénaïde. After all, she had been the first to risk crossing the Atlantic, without family, in the uncomfortable...

A Philadelphia newspaper reported in March 1827 that Joseph Bonaparte had contributed one thousand francs for a monument to Jacques-Louis David, who had died near the end of 1825. Joseph was a grateful admirer of David, not only for outstanding services to his brother but also for the beautiful painting of his two daughters and the art instruction he had given them in Brussels. Joseph’s patronage of the arts was an important aspect of his life in the New World and no doubt his greatest contribution to the culture of the young republic.

The masterpieces of European art he had...

By 1829 the Count de Survilliers’s family was all in Italy. Julie had moved from Brussels to Florence, and Charlotte and her husband Napoleon-Louis were living with her. Napoleon-Louis’s father, Joseph’s brother Louis, was in a nearby villa. Zénaïde and Charles were in Rome, as was Madame Mére and her brother Cardinal Fesch. Lucien with his wife and many children were alternating between Bologna and Canino, while Jérôme was in Trieste. Joseph’s sister, the beautiful Pauline Borghese, had died in 1825 of the same cancer as is thought to have killed Napoleon in 1821. At least Joseph had Canova’s exquistoc...

Joseph convinced himself that the interest, welfare, and glory of France depended on the establishment of Napoleon’s son on the throne as Napoleon II. By early January 1831, he still had had no response from the Chamber of Deputies and, as he told Charles Ingersoll, he no longer expected any. But he was ready for whatever events would transpire “without too much fear, or too much joy.” He was clearly suspicious of Charles Lallemand, for he said the general had no doubt arrived in England because the boat he had sailed on had returned to New York, but he had...

Joseph set foot on English soil for the first time in his life in July 1832, an occasion that may well have brought forth conflicting emotions. England had been France’s traditional enemy ever since he could remember, even from his youth in Corsica, and it was Napoleon’s nemesis during his entire career as general, first consul, and emperor. The expedition to Egypt in 1798 had been an attempt to cut off England’s most direct route to its richest colony, India; the continental blockade was designed to halt British trade with European countries; even the sale of Louisiana was motivated in...

Joseph sailed up the Delaware to Philadelphia on 18 October 1835. There was a certain relief in being back in America where he still had friends and his handsome house and park to enjoy. After the turbulent life he had led in London, Point Breeze would be a tranquil haven. Yet the opportunity to have seen his brothers again, his daughter especially, and other members of his family had meant a great deal to him. He always enjoyed the camaraderie and gaiety of a full house of guests, and French-speaking guests at that. The count was hospitable to a fault;...

Joseph and party arrived back in the United States on 30 September 1838. Samuel Breck met him on the street in Philadelphia and thought his appearance was that of a “very plain country gentleman.” Breck wondered why none of the nine servants the count had brought with him from England had brushed his hat, which looked shabby. At an evening gala it was reported that Joseph was “taciturn and grave.” Word had it that he had returned to America to seek the sun, as he was tired of living in the midst of rain and fog.¹

It was more than...

Captain Morgan made good his promise, as the voyage to England was relatively short and pleasant, apparently without the high winds predicted by Emilie. Joseph was gratified to learn upon landing that the government had given orders that his belongings should pass customs without examination, a concession usually granted only to princes and foreign ministers. He rented a comfortable house in Cavendish Square and settled down with a sanguine feeling about the possible change of attitude in France. His nephew Louis Napoleon was in London at the time and managed to be reconciled with him. The ambitious young man wisely...

In his will, Joseph designated his personal property in America as “land consisting of ten farms on the Crosswicks Creek and the Delaware, a park containing about a thousand acres, a large dwelling house and its appurtenances in the State of New Jersey near the village of Bordentown.” In France he still owned two farms, Survilliers and Parant, and “important claims against the French Government” that he was sure would someday be honored. In London he had household effects, pictures, and other things of value. His estate also comprised what remained to him of the liquidated effects of his uncle...