Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Are there any living descendants of Napoleon Bonaparte?
There are, however, numerous descendants of Napoleon's illegitimate but recognized son, Alexandre Colonna-Walewski, from his union with Marie, Countess Walewski. A descendant of Napoleon's sister Caroline Bonaparte is the actor René Auberjonois. Recent DNA matches with living descendants of Jérôme and Count Walewski have confirmed the existence of descendants of Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, namely the Clovis family.[7]
The current head of the family is Prince Napoleon (Charles Marie Jérôme Victor Napoléon Bonaparte, born 1950), great-great-grandson of Napoleon I's brother Jérôme Bonaparte by his second marriage. He has a son named Jean (born 1986) and a brother called Jérôme (born 1957). There are no remaining descendants in the male line from any other of Napoleon's brothers and no serious political movement exists with the goal of restoring any of these men to the imperial throne of France.
There are no surviving descendants in legitimate male line of any of Napoleon's brothers except Jérôme. This branch of the House of Bonaparte is recognized by Bonapartists as Napoleon I's dynastic heirs, being excluded from residence in France or service in its military by law, along with the heads of the House of Orléans, between 1883 and 1950.
In 1852, Napoleon III, having restored the Bonapartes to power in France, enacted a new decree on the succession. The claim first went to his own male legitimate descendants in the male line (though at that time he had none, he would later have one legitimate son Eugene Bonaparte, who would be recognized by Bonapartists as Napoleon IV before dying young and unmarried). If his own line died out, the new decree allowed the claim to pass to Jérôme, Napoleon's youngest brother, who had previously been excluded and his male descendants by Princess Catharina of Württemberg in the male line, but not his descendants by his original marriage to the American commoner Elizabeth Patterson, of whom Napoleon I had greatly disapproved. The only remaining Bonapartist claimants since 1879 have been the descendants of Jérôme and Catherine of Württemberg in the male line.
Bonaparte was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 9, 1851, the son of Jerôme ("Bo") Napoleon Bonaparte, (1805–1870) and Susan May Williams (1812–1881), from whom the American line of the Bonaparte family descended, and a grandson of Jérôme Bonaparte, the youngest brother of French Emperor Napoleon I and King of Westphalia, 1807–1813. However, the American Bonapartes were not considered part of the dynasty and never used any titles.
In 1852, Napoleon III enacted a new decree on the succession. The claim was given to his own male legitimate descendants in the male line (though at that time he had no son, Louis later had a legitimate son, Eugène Bonaparte, who was recognized by Bonapartists as "Napoleon IV" before dying young and unmarried). If Napoleon III's line died out, he decreed that the claim should pass to Jerome, Napoleon's youngest brother (who had previously been excluded), and his male descendants by Princess Catharina of Württemberg in the male line. (Excluded were his descendants by his first marriage, to the American commoner Elizabeth Patterson, of which Napoleon I had greatly disapproved.) The Bonapartist claimants since 1879, have been the descendants of Jerome and Catherine of Württemberg in the male line.
France passed through a series of Republican régimes until a hereditary monarchy was restored in the person of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was proclaimed hereditary Emperor of the French on 20 May 1804. The succession law promulgated at the same time also demanded a Salic succession, in which Napoleon was to be succeeded by, first, his own legitimate offspring, then his elder brother Joseph Bonaparte and his descendants, and finally his younger brother Louis Bonaparte and his descendants. (Napoleon's other brothers were omitted for various reasons.) The title of the heir apparent of the First Empire was "King of Rome".
Walewski was widely rumoured to be the (unacknowledged) illegitimate son of Napoleon I by his mistress, Countess Marie Walewska, although her husband (Athanasius, Count Walewski) legally acknowledged him as his own son. In 2013, published scholarship comparing DNA haplotype evidence taken from Emperor Napoleon, from his brother King Jérôme Bonaparte's descendant Charles, Prince Napoléon and from Colonna-Walewski's descendant indicated Alexandre's membership in the genetic male-line of the imperial House of Bonaparte.
The succession laws were similar to those of the First Empire, except that Jérôme Bonaparte and his male-line male descendants were, by special decree, eligible for the succession, following the descendants of Napoleon III himself (Joseph Bonaparte had died leaving no male children; other than Napoleon III, no other descendants of Louis Bonaparte survived by 1852).
A Bonapartist movement existed in France ever since the fall of Napoleon in 1815, hoping to return a Bonaparte to the throne. According to the law of succession established by Napoleon I, the claim passed first to his son who had been given the title "King of Rome" at birth by his father. He was known by Bonapartists as Napoleon II and was living under virtual imprisonment at the court of Vienna under the name Duke of Reichstadt. Next in line was Napoleon I's eldest brother Joseph Bonaparte, followed by Louis Bonaparte, but neither Joseph nor Louis had any interest in re-entering public life. When the Duke of Reichstadt died in 1831, Louis-Napoléon became the heir of the dynasty and the leader of the Bonaparte cause.
Cronin states that: ""The second reason is more personal. There are in existence a large number of Lives of Napoleon and, though it will sound presumptuous, I was dissatisfied with their picture of Napoleon. I could not find a living, breathing man. Always to my mind there were glaring contradictions of character. To take one example from many, biographers repeat Napoleon's phrase: "Friendship is only a word. I love no man." But at the same time it was obvious from their own pages that Napoleon had many close friends, more I reckon than any ruler of France, and that he was as fond of them as they were of him. Many of the biographers were evidently embarrassed by this seeming contradiction, and they tried to explain it by saying that Napoleon was different from other men: "Napoleon was a monster of egoism," or "Napoleon was a monster of insincerity." I for one do not believe in monsters."" - Vincent Cronin, Preface of Napoleon 
The Law of Succession that Napoleon I established on becoming Emperor in 1804 provided that the Bonapartist claim to the throne should pass firstly to Napoleon's own legitimate male descendants through the male line. At that time, he had no legitimate sons and it seemed unlikely he would have any due to the age of his wife Joséphine. To Catholic eyes, his eventual response was unacceptable since he engineered a dubious annulment without papal approval of his marriage to Josephine, undertaking a second marriage to the younger Marie Louise, with whom he had one son. The law of succession provided that if Napoleon's own direct line died out, the claim passed first to his older brother Joseph and his legitimate male descendants through the male line then to his younger brother Louis and his legitimate male descendants through the male line. His other brothers Lucien and Jérôme and their descendants were omitted from the succession (even though Lucien was older than Louis) because they had politically opposed the Emperor or because he disapproved of their marriages. Napoleon had one son with Marie Louise, in whose favour he abdicated after his final defeat in 1815. Although the Bonapartes were now deposed and the old Bourbon monarchy was restored, Bonapartists recognized this child as Napoleon II. However, he was sickly, virtually imprisoned in Austria and died young and unmarried, so there were no further direct descendants of Napoleon I. When the Bonaparte Empire was restored to power in France in 1852, the Emperor was Napoleon III, Louis Bonaparte's only living legitimate son (Joseph having died in 1844 without having had a legitimate son, only daughters).
The current head of the Bonaparte family is the Prince Napoleon, great-great-great-grandson of Napoleon I's brother Jérôme Bonaparte, Jean-Christophe Napoléon (born 1986). There are no remaining descendants in the male line from any other of Napoleon's brothers. There is no serious political movement that aims to restore any of these men to the imperial throne of France.
This restored First Empire lasted until 22 June 1815, when Napoleon abdicated again, this time in favor of a regency on behalf of his son (who had been separated from his father in 1814 and was living in Vienna, Austria). The nominal reign of Napoleon II lasted no longer than until 7 July 1815, when an Allied army occupied Paris. Napoleon I was now exiled to the Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he died a prisoner 5 May 1821. Napoleon II continued to live under close observation in Vienna until he died of tuberculosis 22 July 1832. Neither Joseph nor Louis Bonaparte ever made any effort on behalf of the imperial claims that had descended to them.
The Napoleon Museum in Havana, Cuba houses one of the most important collections from the 18th and 19th centuries preserved in the Western hemisphere. The Museum (in San Miguel Street, between Ronda and Mazón, on one side of the University of Havana) reopened in March 2011 after a three-year restoration by the City Historian’s Office.
Napoleon Princess Alix de Foresta, widow of Luis Marie Bonaparte, a descendent of King Jerome, Bonaparte’s younger brother, was especially invited to the island for the opening.
He was educated with his older brother Victor, Prince Napoléon, then lived a lazy life in Paris at the home of his aunt Mathilde Bonaparte. His father directed him to a military career. As a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, he wasn't allowed to join the French Army and therefore became a lieutenant in the Italian Army in Verona, with the approval of his uncle, King Umberto I of Italy.
In addition to these two claims to the historic royal throne of France, there have also been pretenders to the imperial throne of France, created first by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804 and recreated by his nephew Emperor Napoleon III in 1852 (abolished 1870). This claim is today disputed between Jean Christophe, Prince Napoléon and his own father, the self-avowed republican Prince Charles Napoléon (deemed to be excluded from the succession due to a non-dynastic re-marriage), both descendants of Napoleon I's youngest brother, Jérôme Bonaparte.
Joseph Marie François Spoturno was born on 3 May 1874 in Ajaccio, Corsica. He was a descendant of Isabelle Bonaparte, an aunt of Napoleon Bonaparte. His parents were Jean-Baptiste Spoturno and Marie-Adolphine-Françoise Coti, both descendants of Genoese settlers who founded Ajaccio in the 15th century. His parents died when he was a child and the young François was raised by his great-grandmother, Marie Josephe Spoturno, and after her death, by his grandmother, Anna Maria Belone Spoturno, who lived in Marseille.
The Princes of Canino and Musignano formed the genealogically senior line of the Bonaparte family following the death of Joseph Bonaparte in 1844. The line was founded by one of Emperor Napoleon's younger brothers, Lucien Bonaparte. It became extinct in the male line in 1924. The dynastic Bonapartist pretenders descend in the male line from Prince Jérôme Napoléon, Napoleon's youngest brother.
The disturbances of 1848 gave hope to the nascent political undercurrent. Bonapartism, as an ideology of politically neutral French peasants and workers (EJ Hobsbawm), was essential in the election of Napoleon I's nephew Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte as President of the Second Republic, and gave him the political support necessary for his 1852 discarding of the constitution and proclaiming the Second Empire. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte assumed the title Napoleon III to acknowledge the brief reign of Napoleon's son Napoleon II at the end of the Hundred Days in 1815 (see the abdication of Napoleon I in 1815).
According to studies by G. Lucotte and his coauthors based on DNA research since 2011, Napoleon Bonaparte belonged to Y-DNA (direct male ancestry) haplogroup E1b1b1c1* (E-M34*). This haplogroup, rare in Europe, has its highest concentration in Ethiopia and in the Near East (Jordan, Yemen). According to the authors of the study, "Probably Napoléon also knew his remote oriental patrilineal origins, because Francesco Buonaparte (the Giovanni son), who was a mercenary under the orders of the Genoa Republic in Ajaccio in 1490, was nicknamed The Maure of Sarzane." The latest study identifies the common Bonaparte DNA markers from Carlo (Charles) Bonaparte to 3 living descendants.[6][7]
One of the foreign policy issues on which Palmerston and Russell disagreed was the type of relationship that Britain should have with France and especially France's ruler, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. Bonaparte was the nephew of the famous Napoleon Bonaparte, who had become dictator and then Emperor of France from 1804 until 1814. Bonaparte had been elected to a three-year term as President of the Second Republic of France on 20 December 1848. The Constitution of the Second Republic limited the President to a single term in office. Thus, Louis Bonaparte would be unable to succeed himself and after 20 December 1851 would no longer be President. Thus, on 2 December 1851, shortly before the end of his single three-year term in office was to expire, Bonaparte staged a coup against the Second Republic in France, disbanded the elected Constituent Assembly, arrested some of the Republican leaders and declared himself Emperor Napoleon III of France. This coup upset many democrats in England as well as in France. Some British government officials felt that Louis Bonaparte was seeking foreign adventure in the spirit of his uncle—Napoleon I. Consequently, these officials felt that any close association with Bonaparte would eventually lead Britain into another series of wars, like the wars with France and Napoleon dating from 1793 until 1815. British relations with France had scarcely improved since 1815. As prime minister, the Earl of Aberdeen was one of these officials, who feared France and Bonaparte.
In November 1829, Jérôme Napoleon married Susan May Williams, an heiress from Baltimore, and it is from them that the American line of the Bonaparte family descended. They had two sons:
It further provided that if Napoleon I's own direct line died out, the claim passed first to his older brother Joseph Bonaparte and to his legitimate male descendants through the male line, then to his younger brother Louis Bonaparte and his legitimate male descendants through the male line. His other brothers, Lucien Bonaparte and Jérôme Bonaparte, and their descendants, were omitted from the succession, even though Lucien was older than Louis, because they had politically defied the emperor, made marriages of which he disapproved, or both.
Meanwhile, Napoleon I's older brother, Joseph Bonaparte, recognized upon establishment of the First Empire as first in line to succeed and, after the birth of the King of Rome, as second in line, died on 28 July 1844 without ever having had a legitimate son. Although two of Joseph's daughters married, in exile, Bonaparte nephews of Napoleon I, when their dynasty was restored to power in France in December 1851, the man who soon became emperor as Napoleon III was the only living, legally legitimate son of Louis Bonaparte, former King of Holland.
In December 1852, with the imperial crown on his head, Napoleon III, still a bachelor, exercised the authority granted him by a decree in the form of a "Sénatus-consulte", and confirmed by plebecite, to enact a new organic law on the succession (in the event he himself were to leave no legitimate descendants), recognizing Napoleon's last surviving brother, Jérôme Bonaparte, as his heir presumptive. During Napoleon I's reign, Jérôme had been one of the Bonaparte brothers who was bypassed in the order of succession, his first marriage having been an elopement with the American commoner Elizabeth Patterson over the emperor's objections. The Second Empire, however, empowered the new emperor to choose an heir among any of Napoleon I's Bonaparte nephews, so after Jérôme came his male descendants by his second, dynastic marriage to Princess Catharine of Württemberg.