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Joseph Bonaparte
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br>Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte, King of Naples and Sicily, King of Spain and the Indies, Comte de Survilliers (Corte, France, 7 January 1768 – Florence, Italy, 28 July 1844) was the elder brother of French Emperor Napoleon I, who made him King of Naples and Sicily (1806–1808) and later King of Spain. He was king of Spain from 6 June 1808 to 11 December 1813, but from 13 June 1812 he was back in France.
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Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte, King of Naples and Sicily, King of Spain and the Indies, Comte de Survilliers (Corte, France, 7 January 1768 – Florence, Italy, 28 July 1844) was the elder brother of French Emperor Napoleon I, who made him King of Naples and Sicily (1806–1808) and later King of Spain. He was king of Spain from 6 June 1808 to 11 December 1813, but from 13 June 1812 he was back in France.
Early years
Bonaparte was born Giuseppe Buonaparte to Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino at Corte in Corsica. As a lawyer, politician, and diplomat, he served in the Cinq-Cents and was the French ambassador to Rome. He married Julie Clary on 1 August 1794 in Cuges-les-Pins, France. They had had three daughters, Julie Joséphine Bonaparte (1796–1796), Zénaïde Laetitia Julie Bonaparte (1801–1854) and
Charlotte Napoléone Bonaparte (1802–1839). He claimed the surviving two daughters as his heirs. He also sired two children with Maria Giulia, the Countess of Atri (Giulio, born 1806 and Teresa, born 1808). Joseph had two American daughters born at Point Breeze his estate in New Jersey by his mistress Annette Savage (Madame de la Folie), Pauline Anne who died young and Caroline Charlotte (b. 1822, d. 1890) who married Col. Zebulon Howell Benton, Jefferson County NY and had issue.
In 1795 Joseph was a member of the Council of Ancients where he used his position to help his brother overthrow the Directory.
The Château de Villandry had been seized by the French Revolutionary government and in the early 1800s Joseph's brother, Emperor Napoleon, acquired the château for him. In 1806, Bonaparte was given military command of Naples, and shortly afterward was made king by Napoleon, to be replaced after two years by his sister's husband, Joachim Murat, when Joseph was made king of Spain in August 1808, soon after the French invasion.
He somewhat reluctantly left Naples and arrived in Spain just in time for their revolt against French rule, and the beginning of the Peninsular War, in which the French were eventually expelled by Spanish guerilla fighters and by an Anglo-Portuguese army. After retreating with much of his army to northern Spain he attempted to abdicate the Spanish throne and exchange it back for the Neapolitan Throne; Napoleon dismissed this as out of hand and sent reinforcements to assist in suppressing Spain. The rest of his reign there would be tenuous and constantly warring with Spanish guerrillas. He would never establish complete control over the country.
The Spanish people nicknamed him Pepe Botella ("Bottle Joe") and the usual hypothesis has to do with an alleged tendency to drunkenness. Another theory though, points the name as a maligned confusion where when Joseph Bonaparte went outside of the castle where he resided, he looked around with a spyglass - which looked like a bottle, or was made to look like a bottle by his detractors .
Joseph Bonaparte's supporters were called josefinos or afrancesados (frenchified). During his reign, he ended the Spanish Inquisition, partly because Napoleon was at odds with Pope Pius VII at the time. Despite such efforts to win popularity, Bonaparte's foreign birth and support, plus his membership in a Masonic lodge , virtually guaranteed he would never be accepted as legitimate by the bulk of the Spanish people. During his rule of Spain, Venezuela declared independence (1810) from Spain, the first nation to do so. During the Peninsular War, his command of French forces in Spain proved to be only nominal, as his commanders insisted on checking with the king's younger brother before carrying out Joseph's instructions.
Bonaparte abdicated and returned to France after defeat at the Battle of Vitoria. He was seen by Bonapartists as the rightful Emperor of the French after the death of Napoleon's own son Napoleon II in 1832, although he did little to advance his claim.
In America
Bonaparte lived for a time in the United States, initially in New York City and Philadelphia, where his house became the center of activity for French expatriates, but later moved to an estate called Point Breeze in Bordentown, New Jersey near the Delaware River. Joseph's home was on a hill because of his fear of attack by agents of France's enemies, England or Spain as well as Americans unfriendly to his cause. The grounds contain tunnels which are fortified with brick and were high enough for people to walk through standing erect. He was also reputed to have encountered the Jersey Devil while hunting there.
Joseph Bonaparte returned to Europe where he died in Florence, Italy and was buried in the Les Invalides building complex in Paris.
Legacy
See also
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