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Méneval hired a tutor, whom Léon disliked. This soon became a headache for him, as it had been for his father-in-law, not least because Léon’s taste for luxury and pleasure far exceeded his pocket money of 12,000 francs a year. In 1821, Méneval assumed Léon’s guardianship. Neither of them came up with the funds, despite a lawsuit by Napoleon’s executor Charles de Montholon. This legacy did not immediately happen, as the amount was to be taken from money Napoleon claimed was due to him from the “gratitude and sense of honour” of his stepson Eugène de Beauharnais and his widow Marie Louise.

In his instructions to the executors of his will, Napoleon wrote, “I should not be sorry were little Léon to enter the magistracy, if that is to his liking.” (3) Napoleon also bequeathed 300,000 francs to Léon, for purchase of an estate. Léon attended a succession of Parisian boarding schools, with the expectation that he might have a legal career. In June 1815, after Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo and subsequent abdication from the French throne, eight-year-old Léon (with Méneval) joined Napoleon at the Château de Malmaison before the latter’s departure for Rochefort and exile to St. This provided a discreet way for Napoleon to manage the funds he was settling on the child.

In March 1812, the Baron des Mauvières – the father-in-law of Napoleon’s private secretary, Baron de Méneval – was appointed Léon’s guardian. Once Napoleon’s legitimate son, the King of Rome, was born, Léon received much less attention, although Napoleon continued to provide for the boy and remained fond of him. I often fetched him to him he would caress and give him a hundred delicacies, and was much amused with his vivacity and his repartees, which were very witty for his age. Léon was brought up under the last name of Mâcon, a recently deceased general of whom Napoleon thought highly.

#Family tree queen victoria descendants series

Meanwhile, young Léon was taken from his mother’s care and entrusted to a series of nurses, paid for by Napoleon. In 1814, she married Charles de Luxbourg, a Bavarian diplomat. Eléonore’s husband was killed during the Russian campaign in 1812. In 1808 Napoleon arranged for her to marry an infantry lieutenant. So the baby was christened Léon, and the birth certificate read: “Son of Demoiselle Eléonore Denuel, aged twenty years, of independent means father absent.” (1)Įléonore’s liaison with Napoleon ended shortly after Léon’s birth. When Eléonore asked for permission to name the boy Napoleon, he agreed to half the name. Napoleon was delighted, as this proved he was not responsible for his wife Josephine’s infertility. On December 13, 1806, she gave birth to Napoleon’s first child, a boy. Napoleon set her up in a house on Rue de la Victoire in Paris. In April 1806 Eléonore obtained a divorce from her husband, who was in prison for forgery. Napoleon met her in 1805, when she was a beautiful 18-year-old reader in the employ of Napoleon’s sister, Caroline Bonaparte Murat (Eléonore was also the mistress of Caroline’s husband Joachim). One of these was Eléonore Denuelle de La Plaigne.

Though Napoleon claimed he had only seven mistresses, he probably had at least 21. Napoleon’s illegitimate son, Charles Léon Denuelle