19 Facts About Pauline Bonaparte

Pauline Bonaparte was the sixth child of Letizia Ramolino and Carlo Buonaparte, Corsica's representative to the court of King Louis XVI of France.

Pauline Bonaparte married Charles Leclerc, a French general, a union ended by his death in 1802.

Pauline Bonaparte's only child, Dermide Leclerc, born from her first marriage, died in childhood.

Pauline Bonaparte was the only Bonaparte sibling to visit Napoleon in exile on his principality, Elba.

Pauline's brother Lucien Bonaparte made seditious comments at the local Jacobin chapter in the summer of 1793, forcing the family to flee to the mainland.

Pauline Bonaparte put General Leclerc at its head, appointing him Governor-General of the island.

Leclerc, Dermide, and Pauline Bonaparte embarked for the colony from Brest on 14 December 1801.

Pauline Bonaparte, meanwhile, was left aboard the flagship with their son.

Leclerc, fearing for Pauline Bonaparte's safety, gave express orders to Jacques de Norvin, a sergeant, to remove Pauline Bonaparte from Saint-Domingue at a moment's notice, but these precautions proved unnecessary when Leclerc defeated the insurgents.

Pauline Bonaparte reached the Bay of Toulon on 1 January 1803.

Pauline Bonaparte inherited 700,000 francs in liquid capital and assets from Leclerc.

Pauline Bonaparte confided in a friend that she "was bored" with the code of mourning outlined in the First Consul's civil code, compelling her to withdraw from Parisian society, which, before her time in Saint-Domingue, had had her at its center.

The marriage contract brought Camillo a dowry of 500,000 francs; to Pauline Bonaparte, it brought 300,000 francs worth of jewelry and the use of the Borghese family diamonds.

However, Pauline Bonaparte continued her extramarital affairs, including an affair with the violinist Niccolo Paganini.

Pauline Bonaparte fell into temporary disfavor with her brother because of her hostility to his second wife, Empress Marie Louise, but when Napoleon's fortune failed, Pauline Bonaparte showed herself more loyal than any of his other sisters and brothers.

Pauline Bonaparte was the only Bonaparte sibling to visit her brother during his exile on Elba.

Pauline Bonaparte lived in a villa between the Porta Pia and the Porta Salaria that was called Villa Paolina after her and decorated in the Egyptomania style she favored.

Pauline Bonaparte was of frail health for much of her life, probably due to salpingitis.

Pauline Bonaparte died on 9 June 1825 at the age of forty-four at the Palazzo Salviati-Borghese in Florence, the cause of death being given as 'tumor on the stomach' but it may have been pulmonary tuberculosis.