Joseph Bonaparte

Joseph Bonaparte was made king of Naples and then king of Spain by his younger brother, was driven out of both, and spent seventeen years as a country gentleman in New Jersey. He was the eldest surviving Bonaparte, trained as a lawyer, and served the French Republic as a diplomat: he negotiated the treaty of Mortefontaine with the United States in 1800 that ended the Quasi-War, the Concordat with the papacy, and the peace of Amiens with Britain. Napoleon gave him Naples in 1806 and Spain in 1808, and Spain destroyed him. The Spanish did not accept a foreign king imposed after the abdications at Bayonne; the rising began within weeks, and the guerrilla war that followed - the word entered English from it - tied down French armies for six years. He was mocked as Pepe Botella, a drunkard, which he was not, and he was never given real authority over the marshals in his own kingdom, who took orders from Paris and ignored him. He abolished the Inquisition and the internal customs barriers, which was not enough. After Vitoria in 1813 he fled with the treasury and the paintings. He escaped to America in 1815 with the crown jewels, bought an estate at Point Breeze near Bordentown, and entertained American politicians for years while declining an occasionally floated offer of the Mexican throne. He died in Florence. He is the reason a good deal of Spanish royal art ended up in private hands and museums outside Spain, some of it recovered from his baggage train at Vitoria by Wellington, who offered it back and was told to keep it. His American neighbours called him the Count of Survilliers. He returned to Europe in 1832 and outlived Napoleon by twenty-three years.

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