French Revolution
The French Revolution was a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France and its colonies beginning in 1789. The Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, catalyzed violent periods of political turmoil, culminated in a dictatorship under Napoleon who brought many of its principles to areas he conquered in Western Europe and beyond. Inspired by liberal and radical ideas, the Revolution profoundly altered the course of modern history, triggering the global decline of absolute monarchies while replacing them with republics and liberal democracies. Through the Revolutionary Wars, it unleashed a wave of global conflicts that extended from the Caribbean to the Middle East. Historians regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history; the causes of the French Revolution are still debated among historians. Following the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution, the French government was in debt, it attempted to restore its financial status through unpopular taxation schemes, which were regressive.
Leading up to the Revolution, years of bad harvests worsened by deregulation of the grain industry and environmental problems inflamed popular resentment of the privileges enjoyed by the aristocracy and the Catholic clergy of the established church. Some historians hold something similar to what Thomas Jefferson proclaimed: that France had "been awakened by our Revolution." Demands for change were formulated in terms of Enlightenment ideals and contributed to the convocation of the Estates General in May 1789. During the first year of the Revolution, members of the Third Estate took control, the Bastille was attacked in July, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was passed in August, the Women's March on Versailles forced the royal court back to Paris in October. A central event of the first stage, in August 1789, was the abolition of feudalism and the old rules and privileges left over from the Ancien Régime; the next few years featured political struggles between various liberal assemblies and right-wing supporters of the monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms.
The Republic was proclaimed in September 1792 after the French victory at Valmy. In a momentous event that led to international condemnation, Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. External threats shaped the course of the Revolution; the Revolutionary Wars beginning in 1792 featured French victories that facilitated the conquest of the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries and most territories west of the Rhine – achievements that had eluded previous French governments for centuries. Internally, popular agitation radicalised the Revolution culminating in the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins; the dictatorship imposed by the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror, from 1793 until 1794, established price controls on food and other items, abolished slavery in French colonies abroad, de-established the Catholic church and created a secular Republican calendar, religious leaders were expelled, the borders of the new republic were secured from its enemies. After the Thermidorian Reaction, an executive council known as the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795.
They suspended elections, repudiated debts, persecuted the Catholic clergy, made significant military conquests abroad. Dogged by charges of corruption, the Directory collapsed in a coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799. Napoleon, who became the hero of the Revolution through his popular military campaigns, established the Consulate and the First Empire, setting the stage for a wider array of global conflicts in the Napoleonic Wars; the modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. All future revolutionary movements looked back to the Revolution as their predecessor, its central phrases and cultural symbols, such as La Marseillaise and Liberté, fraternité, égalité, ou la mort, became the clarion call for other major upheavals in modern history, including the Russian Revolution over a century later. The values and institutions of the Revolution dominate French politics to this day; the Revolution resulted in the suppression of the feudal system, emancipation of the individual, a greater division of landed property, abolition of the privileges of noble birth, nominal establishment of equality among men.
The French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not only national, for it intended to benefit all humanity. Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of democracies, it became the focal point for the development of most modern political ideologies, leading to the spread of liberalism, radicalism and secularism, among many others. The Revolution witnessed the birth of total war by organising the resources of France and the lives of its citizens towards the objective of military conquest; some of its central documents, such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, continued to inspire movements for abolitionism and universal suffrage in the next century. Historians have pointed to many events and factors within the Ancien Régime that led to the Revolution. Rising social and economic inequality, new political ideas emerging from the Enlightenment, economic mismanagement, environmental factors leading to agricultural failure, unmanageable national debt, political mismanagement on the part of King Louis XVI have all been cited as laying the groundwork for the Revolution.
Over the course of the 18th century, there emerged what the philosopher Jürgen Habermas called the idea of the "public sphere" in France and elsewhere
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson known as Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, was a French painter and pupil of Jacques-Louis David, who participated in the early Romantic movement by including elements of eroticism in his paintings. Girodet is remembered for his precise and clear style and for his paintings of members of the Napoleonic family. Girodet was born at Montargis, he lost his parents in his early youth. The care of his inheritance and education fell to his guardian, M. Trioson, "médecin-de-mesdames", who adopted him. Girodet took the surname Trioson in 1812. In school he pursued a military career, he changed to the study of painting under a teacher named Luquin and entered the school of Jacques-Louis David. At the age of 22 he competed for the Prix de Rome with a painting of the Story of Joseph and his Brethren. From 1789 to 1793 he lived in Italy and while in Rome he painted his Hippocrate refusant les presents d'Artaxerxes and Endymion-dormant, a work, praised at the Salon of 1793. Back in France, Girodet painted many portraits, including some of members of the Bonaparte family.
In 1806, in competition with the Sabines of David, he exhibited his Scène de déluge, awarded the decennial prize. In 1808 he produced the Reddition de Vienne and Atala au tombeau, a work which won immense popularity, by its fortunate choice of subject – François-René de Chateaubriand's novel Atala, first published in 1801 – and its remarkable departure from the theatricality of Girodet's usual manner, he would return to his theatrical style in La Révolte du Caire. Girodet was a member of the Academy of Painting and of the Institut de France, a knight of the Order of Saint Michael, officer of the Legion of Honour. Among his pupils were Hyacinthe Aubry-Lecomte, Augustin Van den Berghe the Younger, François Edouard Bertin, Angélique Bouillet, Alexandre-Marie Colin, Marie Philippe Coupin de la Couperie, Henri Decaisne, Paul-Emile Destouches, Achille Devéria, Eugène Devéria, Savinien Edme Dubourjal, Joseph Ferdinand Lancrenon, Antonin Marie Moine, Jean Jacques François Monanteuil, Henry Bonaventure Monnier, Rosalie Renaudin, Johann Heinrich Richter, François Edme Ricois, Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury, Philippe Jacques Van Brée.
In his forties his powers began to fail, his habit of working at night and other excesses weakened his constitution. In the Salon of 1812 he exhibited only a Tête de Vierge. In 1824, the year in which he produced his portraits of Cathelineau and Bonchamps, Girodet died on December 9 in Paris. At a sale of his effects after his death, some of his drawings realized enormous prices. Girodet produced a vast quantity of illustrations, amongst which may be cited those for the Didot editions of the works of Virgil and Racine. Fifty-four of his designs for the works of he ancient Greek poet Anacreon were engraved by M. Châtillon. Girodet used much of his time on literary composition, his poem Le Peintre, together with poor imitations of classical poets, essays on Le Génie and La Grâce, were published posthumously in 1829, with a biographical notice by his friend Coupin de la Couperie. Delecluze, in his Louis David et son temps, has a brief life of Girodet. Girodet: Romantic Rebel at the Art Institute of Chicago was the first retrospective in the United States devoted to the works of Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson.
The exhibition assembled more than 100 seminal works that demonstrated the artist's range as a painter as well as a draftsman. The peculiarities which mark Girodet's position as the herald of the romantic movement are evident in his Sleep of Endymion, he has a decided inclination to the ancient style, a statuary expression is perceptible in his works, but they are distinguished for life and beauty. His drawing is correct, of great precision, he works with equal genius. He loves to produce effect by strong lights which are mostly in unison with the spirit of the pieces; the same incongruity of classic and romantic elements marks Girodet's Danae and his Quatre Saisons, executed for the king of Spain, shows itself to a ludicrous extent in his Fingal, executed for Napoleon in 1802. This work unites the defects of the classic and romantic schools, for Girodet's imagination ardently and pursued the ideas excited by the varied reading of both classic and modern literature, the impressions he received from the external world afforded him little stimulus or check.
List of Orientalist artists French painting 1774-1830: the Age of Revolution. New York. 1975. Miscellaneous works Three portraits by Girodet Works of Girodet at http://www.the-athenaeum.org
France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Letizia Ramolino
Nob. Maria Letizia Buonaparte née Ramolino was mother of Napoleon I of France, she was born in Ajaccio, Republic of Genoa, the daughter of Nobile Giovanni Geronimo Ramolino, Captain of Corsican Regiments of Chivalry and Infantry in the Army of the Republic of Genoa, his wife Nobile Angela Maria Pietrasanta. The distant cousins of the Ramolinos were a low rank of nobility in the Republic of Genoa. Like most such girls in the 18th century, Letizia was educated at home. After the death of her father, her mother remarried the Swiss-born naval officer Franz Fesch, a captain in the service of the Republic of Genoa stationed on Corsica, gave birth to two children, among them her half-brother Joseph Fesch. On 2/7 June 1764, when she was thirteen, Letizia married the trainee attorney Carlo Buonaparte, himself only seventeen, at Ajaccio. First pregnant a few months she went on to give birth to thirteen children, eight of whom survived infancy, most of whom were created monarchs by Napoleon. Letizia and her husband Carlo befriended the island's governor, Charles Louis de Marbeuf and the intendant, Bertrand de Boucheporn whose wife was the godmother of their son Louis, the future king of Holland.
These friendships might have helped to have Napoleon admitted to the Brienne cadet school. She was described as a harsh mother, had a down-to-earth view of most things; when most European mothers bathed children once a month, she had her children bathed every other day. Letizia spoke Italian and Corsican, never learned French. In 1785, when she was 35, her husband died of cancer. In 1793, she left Corsica and resettled with her children in Marseilles in France, where her son Napoleon had a successful military career and took power. Described as frugal and with simple tastes, she did not approve of her son's marriage to the extravagant Josephine de Beauharnais in 1796. In 1804, her son Napoleon declared himself Emperor. Despite being depicted in the famous painting of the coronation of Napoleon by David, she did not attend her son's coronation. By decree, she was decreed "Madam, the Mother of His Imperial Majesty The Emperor", Imperial Highness, on 18 May 1804 or 23 March 1805. Napoleon paid her 25,000 francs a month.
She did not attend the Imperial court and lived at the Chateau de Pont-sur-Seine, residing at the Hotel de Brienne on the rare occasions when she did visit Paris. In 1814, she shared Napoleon's exile in Elba. After 1815 she moved to Rome, in Palazzo D'Aste-Bonaparte in piazza Venezia, where she lived out her days with her younger brother Joseph Fesch. During her years in Rome, she saw any other family members than her brother, who left her. For a time the painter Anna Barbara Bansi served as her companion, she died of old age in 1836, aged 85, three weeks before the 51st anniversary of her husband's death. By she was nearly blind and had outlived her most famous son Napoleon by 15 years. Napoleone Buonaparte. Maria Anna Buonaparte. Joseph Bonaparte King of Naples and Sicily, King of Spain and the Indies, Comte de Survilliers, he married on 1 August 1794 Marie Julie Clary. Napoleon Bonaparte, namesake of his deceased older brother and Emperor of the French, he married on 9 March 1796 to Joséphine de Beauharnais and secondly on 1 April 1810 to Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, Archduchess of Austria.
Maria Anna Buonaparte, namesake of her deceased older sister. Maria Anna Buonaparte, namesake of her deceased older sisters. A stillborn son. Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino and Musignano, married on 5 May 1794 to Christine Boyer and secondly on 26 October 1803 to Alexandrine de Bleschamp, widow of Hippolyte Jouberthon, known as "Madame Jouberthon". Maria Anna Bonaparte, namesake of her deceased older sisters, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, married on 5 May 1797 to Felice Pasquale Baciocchi, named Prince of Lucca. Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, married on 4 January 1802 to Hortense de Beauharnais. Pauline Bonaparte, Sovereign Princess and Duchess of Guastalla, married 5 May 1797 to Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc and married secondly on 28 August 1803 Camillo Borghese, 6th Prince of Sulmona. Caroline Bonaparte, Grand Duchess of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, wife of Joachim Murat queen consort of Naples. Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, married firstly on December 24 1803 to Elizabeth Patterson, secondly on 22 August 1807 to princess Catharina of Württemberg and thirdly to Justine Bartolini-Baldelli.
François Carlo Antommarchi This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed.. "article name needed". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne. Marek, Miroslav. "Bonaparte Genealogy". Genealogy.euweb.cz Genealogy. EU. Letizia Bonaparte Photograph part of the Nineteenth Century Notables Digital Collection at Gettysburg College
Louis Bonaparte
Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was a younger brother of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. He was a monarch in his own right from 1806 to 1810, ruling over the Kingdom of Holland. In that capacity he was known as Louis I. Louis was the fifth surviving child and fourth surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino, out of eight children who lived past infancy, he and his siblings were all born on Corsica, conquered by France less than a decade before his birth. Louis followed his older brothers into the French Army, where he benefited from Napoleon's patronage. In 1802, he married the daughter of Empress Joséphine. In 1806, Napoleon established the Kingdom of Holland in place of the Batavian Republic, appointing Louis as the new king. Napoleon had intended for Holland to be little more than a puppet state, but Louis was determined to be as independent as possible, in fact became quite popular amongst his new people. Growing tired of his brother's wilfulness, Napoleon annexed Holland into the French Empire in 1810.
Louis fled into exile in Austria. His son Louis-Napoléon established the Second French Empire, taking the throne as Napoleon III. Louis was born in Corsica, he was a younger brother of Joseph, Napoleon and Elisa Bonaparte, the older brother of Pauline, Jérôme Bonaparte. Louis' godparents were the island's governor, Mr de Marbeuf and the wife of the intendant, Bertrand de Boucheporn, whom Letizia and her husband, had befriended. Louis Bonaparte's early career was spent in the Army, he served with Napoleon in Egypt. Thanks to his older brother, Louis was given a commission in the French Military, was promoted to Lieutenant in the 4th Artillery Regiment, from there he was made Aide de Camp on Napoleon's staff. Napoleon, during his Italian Campaign, recommended Louis to Carnot, Louis was made a Captain, he became a General by the age of 25, although he himself felt that he had risen too high in too short a time. Upon Louis's return to France, he was involved in Napoleon's plot to overthrow the Directory.
After becoming the First Consul, Napoleon arranged for a marriage between Louis and Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter of Empress Josephine, hence Napoleon's stepdaughter. Hortense, opposed to the marriage at first, was persuaded by her mother to marry Louis for the sake of the family, she did so. Louis suffered from periods of mental illness; these periods of depression or mental instability would plague Louis until his death. Feeling that the Batavian Republic was too independent for his liking, Napoleon replaced it with the Kingdom of Holland on 5 June 1806, placed Louis on the throne. Napoleon had intended for his younger brother to be little more than a French prefect of Holland. However, Louis had his own mind, tried to be a responsible and independent ruler. In an effort to endear himself to his adopted country, he tried to learn the Dutch language, his Dutch was so poor that he told the people he was the Konijn van'Olland, rather than Koning van Holland. However, his sincere effort to learn Dutch earned him some respect from his subjects.
Having declared himself Dutch, Louis tried to make his court Dutch as well. He forced his court and ministers to speak only Dutch, to renounce their French citizenships; this latter was too much for his wife Hortense who, in France at the time of his demands, refused his request. Louis and Hortense had never gotten along, this demand further strained their relationship, she only came to Holland reluctantly, deliberately tried to avoid Louis as much as possible. Louis could never settle on the location for his capital city, he changed capitals over a dozen times, trying Amsterdam, The Hague and other places. On one occasion, after visiting the home of a wealthy Dutch merchant, he liked the place so much that he had the owner evicted so he could take up residence there. Louis moved again after seven weeks, his constant moving kept the court in upheaval. The European diplomatic corps went so far as to petition Bonaparte to remain in one place so they could keep up with him; this restlessness was attributed to his alleged "lunacy".
Hortense bore Louis's sons Napoléon Charles Bonaparte and Napoléon Louis Bonaparte in Paris, while Louis was in Holland. In 1806, Louis called for his son to be sent to him in Holland, but he was again refused by Hortense, who believed that her son would never be returned to France; when Louis appealed to his brother Napoleon for help, Napoleon sided with Hortense. Napoleon kept the boy in his own court, he had him named the heir to the French throne prior to the birth of his own son. Two major tragedies occurred during the reign of Louis Bonaparte: the explosion of a cargo ship loaded with gunpowder in the heart of the city of Leiden in 1807, a major flood in Holland in 1809. In both instances and oversaw local relief efforts, which helped earn him the title of Louis the Good. Louis Bonaparte's reign was short-lived, due to two factors; the first was that Napoleon wanted to reduce the value of French loans from Dutch investors by two-thirds, meaning a serious economic blow to the Netherlands.
The
Napoléon Charles Bonaparte
Napoléon Louis Charles Bonaparte was the eldest son of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense de Beauharnais. His father was Emperor Napoleon. At the time of his birth his uncle was First Consul of childless. Napoleon Charles was his eldest nephew and seen as a potential heir, but he died before reaching his fifth birthday on 5 May 1807 of croup. Napoleon Charles had two brothers: the youngest, Louis Napoleon became Emperor as Napoleon III in 1852. 5 June 1806 – 5 May 1807: His Royal Highness the Prince Royal of Holland
Eugène de Beauharnais
Eugène Rose de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg was the first child and only son of Alexandre de Beauharnais and Joséphine Tascher de la Pagerie, first wife of Napoleon I. He was born in Paris and became the stepson and adopted child of Napoleon I, his biological father was executed during the revolutionary Reign of Terror. He was Viceroy of Italy under his stepfather. Historians consider him one of the ablest of Napoleon's relatives. Eugène's first campaign was in the Vendée. However, within a year his mother Joséphine had arranged his return to Paris. In the Italian campaigns of 1796–1797, Eugène served as aide-de-camp to his stepfather, whom he accompanied to Egypt. In Egypt, Eugène was wounded during the Siege of Acre and returned to France with Napoleon in the autumn of 1799, helping to bring about the reconciliation of the General and his mother, who had become estranged due to the extramarital affairs of both. During the Coup of Brumaire, Eugène accompanied Napoleon to Saint-Cloud, where the legislative assemblies were brought into submission.
When Napoleon became First Consul following Brumaire, Eugène became a captain in the Chasseurs à Cheval of the Consular Guard. With his squadron took part in the Battle of Marengo where, though half his men fell, he led charge after charge. By a decree of 1 February 1805 Eugène was created Arch-Chancellor of State the French Empire; as commander of the Imperial Guard, Eugène preceded his step-father to Milan ahead of Napoleon's coronation as King of Italy on 26 May 1805. Napoleon had intended to place his brother Joseph on the Italian throne and after Joseph's refusal, his nephew Napoléon Charles, the son of Louis Bonaparte and Eugène's sister, Hortense. However, both Joseph and Louis refused and so Napoleon instead placed the Iron Crown upon his own head. During the coronation Napoleon handed the royal ring and mantle to his stepson and on 7 June 1805 announced Eugène's appointment as Viceroy of Italy to the Italian Legislative Assembly. During the War of the Fifth Coalition, Eugène was put in command of the Army of Italy, with General Étienne-Jacques-Joseph-Alexandre MacDonald as his military advisor.
In April 1809 he fought and lost the Battle of Sacile against the Austrian army of the Archduke John, but Eugène's troops decisively won the rematch at the Battle of the Piave in May and the Battle of Raab in June. After the Battle of Aspern-Essling, Napoleon recalled the Army of Italy to Austria. After joining the main army on the island of Lobau in the Danube, Eugène took part in the Battle of Wagram. During the Russian campaign, Eugène again commanded the Army of Italy with which he fought in the Battle of Borodino and the Battle of Maloyaroslavets. After Napoleon and Joachim Murat had left the retreating army, Eugène took command of the remnants and led it back to Germany in 1813. During the campaign of 1813, Eugène fought in the Battle of Lützen. Napoleon sent him back to Italy, where he organised the defence against the Austrians, holding out on the Mincio until the abdication in 1814. After the fall of Napoleon in 1814, Eugène retired to Munich and at the behest of his father-in-law King Maximilian of Bavaria, did not get involved with Napoleon and France again.
On 14 June 1804 he was made an official member of the imperial family as His Imperial Highness, French Prince Eugène de Beauharnais. By a statute of 5 June 1805 the Emperor added Viceroy of Italy to his titles. Eugène was adopted by Napoleon on 12 January 1806, though excluded from succession to the French Empire. On 16 February 1806, Eugène was declared heir presumptive to the Kingdom of Italy, in the absence of a second son of Napoleon. On 20 December 1807 he was given the title of Prince de Venise, a title created on 30 March 1806, when the Venetian Province taken from Austria in 1805 was united to Bonaparte's Kingdom of Italy. In 1810, Napoleon used his influence over Karl von Dalberg, Archbishop of Regensburg and Grand Duke of Frankfurt, to name Eugène as constitutional heir of the grand duchy. Von Dalberg abdicated on 26 October 1813 due to Frankfurt's imminent conquest by the allied armies, Eugène became nominal grand duke until Frankfurt was occupied by the allies in December of that same year.
A further imperial sinecure was Archichancelier d'État de l'Empire de France. He was an active Freemason and was involved in setting up the Grand Orient of Italy and its Supreme Council. On 14 January 1806, two days after his adoption by Napoleon, Eugène married Princess Augusta Amalia Ludovika Georgia of Bavaria, eldest daughter of Napoleon's ally, King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria. On 14 November 1817, his father-in-law made him Duke of Prince of Eichstätt. Eugène and Augusta had seven children: Princess Joséphine Maximiliane Eugénie Napoléonne de Beauharnais. Princess Eugénie Hortense Auguste de Beauharnais. Prince Auguste Charles Eugène Napoléon de Beauharnais, 2nd Duke of Leuchtenberg. There was no issue from this marriage. Princess Amélie Auguste Eugénie Napoléone de Beauharnais. Princess Theodelinde Louise Eugénie Auguste Napoléone de Beauharnais. Princess Carolina Clotilde de Beauharnais
