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"The Prince Victor Napoleon" by Laeticia de
Witt
Doctoral thesis in Contemporary History
Supervisor : M. Jean Tulard
University Paris IV - Sorbonne
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It is first of all necessary to put Prince Victor
in context. He was the grandson of King Jerome, Napoleon I's last brother
and Catherine Würthemburg. It was to assist the Emperor politically that Jerôme
married his second wife Catherine Würthemburg. Together they were to have three
children: Prince Jerôme Bonaparte (killed by an illness in 1847), Princess
Mathilde and Prince Napoleon-Joseph who, after his brother's death, took the
name Jerôme. He was mockingly nicknamed Plon-Plon ('Mr Plod'). During the
Second Empire, in 1859, with the aim of furthering Napoleon III's Italian
politics, 'Plon Plon' married Princess Marie-Clotilde of Savoy, daughter of
Victor-Emmanuel of Savoy and Adélaïde de Habsburg. Three children were born
from this union: Victor in 1862, Louis in 1864 and Laetitia in 1866. Prince
Victor was therefore the grandson of two Kings, Jerôme King of Westphalia and
Victor-Emmanuel, King of Italy from 1861 onwards.
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His prestigious family connections meant that
Prince Victor was able to play a political role of the highest importance.
As a result of various successions, Prince Victor as last male heir of Napoleon
I and his brothers became head of the Imperial house. In fact, King Joseph only
had daughters and Louis's (Napoleon III's) line ended in 1879 with the death of
the Prince Imperial, hence Jerome Bonaparte ended up the only direct descendent
remaining.
On the death of the Prince Imperial, Prince Jerôme should have become the
head of the Imperial house. But because of Jerome's reactionary political ideas,
the Prince Imperial added a codicil to his will stating that 'the duties of
this our house towards this our country should not be cancelled by my death.
When I am dead, the task of continuing the work of Napoleon I and Napoleon III
falls to the eldest son of Prince Napoleon'. The Prince Imperial therefore
passed over Jerome, preferring Victor, and it was a decision which was to have
serious repercussions. First of all, the Prince Imperial's codicil caused the
breakdown of all relations between Jerôme and his son Victor. Second, at the
tender age of eighteen and quite against his will, Prince Victor became the
representative of the imperial cause. And he was to remain such until his death
in 1926. But despite being the head of the imperial house for forty years,
Prince Victor has been almost completely forgotten by history.
Several reasons could be advanced for this.
Prince Victor lived in a period when to have the same name as Napoleon I was not
necessarily an advantage. The Second Empire had only recently fallen and the
defeat of Sedan was still very fresh in people's memories. Furthermore, Prince
Victor found himself at the head of the Bonapartist party almost 'by accident',
hence he had not been prepared for the job. He was very quickly blocked in any
actions he might have taken by the bill of exile, passed by the Third Republic
in 1886, which distanced him from his supporters. He never had the time to
become known and the Bonapartist party was in full decline.
The almost non-existent bibliography on Prince
Victor shows clearly the obscurity into which he has fallen. With the
exception of some works of Bonapartist propaganda written on him while he was
still alive, no book has ever been written on him. The fullest work, a biography
of him written by André Martinet and published in 1895, was written for
doctrinal purposes. What is more, being published thirty years before his death
it omits almost half of his life. Fortunately particularly detailed archives
exist both in Paris and abroad. In Paris there are papers at the Archives
Nationales (most of Prince Victor's correspondence, his personal papers and
propaganda photos), and at the Archives de la Préfecture de Police, with police
reports for the years 1884-1901 (as pretender to the imperial throne, Prince
Victor was kept under permanent surveillance). For the years after 1900, there
are archives held by the Primoli family in Rome and in the Palais-Royal in
Brussels.
The lack of interest in Prince Victor is even more surprising given that
biographies have been written on nearly all the other members of the imperial
family. It is for this reason that Laeticia de Witt has decided to fill this
historical gap and to discover not only who Prince Victor really was but also
what was his political role in a period when the Republic had come to stay.
In her thesis, the author intends to approach Prince Victor from three points
of view :
