Lucien Bonaparte

Prince of Canino, born in Ajaccio, Corsica, the second surviving brother of Napoleon I. In 1798 he was made a member of the Council of Five Hundred, and just before the 18th Brumaire was elected its president. He was successful as minister of the interior, and as ambassador to Madrid (1800) undermined British influence. He had never wholly shaken off his early strong republicanism, and having denounced the arrogant policy of his brother towards the court of Rome, he was ‘advised’ to leave Roman territory. In 1810, on his way to America, he was captured by the English and kept a prisoner until 1814, after which he returned to Italy.

With the pope a prisoner of Napoleon in 1809, Lucien was sailing for the United States, when he was captured instead by the British and passed the years 1810 to 1814 as a prisoner of the British, settled comfortably in the English countryside, and working on a heroic poem on the subject of Charlemagne.