King Bonaparte and the Jersey Devil: Surprising Facts About a Bonaparte’s Life in America

13. Napoleon Bonaparte in America?

Napoleon Bonaparte wrote an acquaintance: “For me, idleness would be the cruelest torture. Without armies or an empire I see only science as influencing my spirit“. America was to be his camp, from which to launch scientific and exploratory expeditions. Napoleon planned to transfer three million gold francs to an American bank. He also issued orders to prepare his library for shipment, along with enough furniture for two houses, linen, fine china, dozens of hunting guns, his best horses, and fifteen stable keepers to take care of them. The plan hit a snag, however, when Napoleon made it to a French port, where he expected to find a ship to spirit him across the Atlantic. However, the harbor was full of enemies, so Napoleon surrendered to the British Royal Navy. He was exiled to Helena. As seen below, it would be another royal Bonaparte who would end up in America.

12. The Other Bonaparte

To be an average person and live in the shadow of a highly accomplished relative can be tough. If you add a layer of sibling rivalry when that highly accomplished relative is one’s kid brother, it becomes tougher yet. But what if that kid brother happens to be Napoleon Bonaparte? That would take things to levels of complexity and awkwardness that most of us never have to deal with. Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844), Napoleon’s older brother, was not so lucky. Joseph’s life was swept up and carried away like a leaf caught up in the tornado that was his younger brother’s career. Joseph was a mild mannered, idealistic, and low key figure who just wanted to be a writer. He was first pressured by his father to become a lawyer, and then by Napoleon to become king of Naples, and then king of Spain.

11. Good King Joseph of Naples, and Disastrous King Joseph of Spain

Joseph Bonaparte turned out to be a good king in Naples, but a disastrous one in Spain. His royal career came to a pathetic end, and King Joseph went into exile. Incongruously, he ended up in New Jersey. There, he had an encounter with the Garden State’s spookiest creature, the Jersey Devil. Long before his encounter with a spooky New Jersey apparition, however, Joseph Bonaparte had been born Giuseppe Bounaparte in 1768. He later Gallicized it into the name by which he came to be known to history. Joseph’s father was a Corsican patriot who resisted France’s invasion of Corsica in 1768 – 1769. Eventually, he joined the winners and became a supporter of French rule. Joseph, the third of his parents’ children but the first to survive infancy, was raised in a middle class environment that afforded him access to formal education.

10. Dominated by a Younger Brother

After France occupied Corsica, the Bonapartes moved to the French mainland, where Joseph continued his education. Never strong willed, he was often dominated by his younger brother, Napoleon. A pattern was established in childhood that lasted into adulthood, in which Joseph looked up to and followed his kid brother’s lead, not the other way around. Joseph wanted to become a writer. Unfortunately, he gave in to in to his father’s demands that he pursue a less flighty career, and instead studied law in Pisa, Italy. He then settled in Marseilles, where he met and married a rich merchant’s daughter. Both Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte supported the French Revolution. Joseph served the cause in the civilian government, and Napoleon in the military. While Joseph attended law school and wooed his future wife, Napoleon began his meteoric rise. He kicked off his ascent by expelling British-backed royalist rebels from Toulon in 1793.

9. The Bonaparte Brothers Seize Control of France

As Napoleon continued his rise, Joseph Bonaparte served the French Republic as a legislator in its lower house, the Council of Five Hundred, in the upper house, the Council of Ancients, and as diplomat. In the latter role, Joseph represented France as ambassador in Rome, and also as a minister plenipotentiary who negotiated a treaty of friendship and commerce with the United States. When Napoleon overthrew the government, he was fortunate to have two brothers as prominent members of the French legislature. While older brother Joseph served in the Council of Ancients, equivalent to the US Senate, younger brother Lucien served as President of the Council of Five Hundred – equivalent to US Speaker of the House. The Bonaparte brothers were thus well positioned to help Napoleon seize power on November 9^th, 1799, otherwise known as the Coup of 18 Brumaire, after its date on the French Revolutionary Calendar.

8. Joseph Bonaparte, the Diplomat

Joseph Bonaparte continued to serve as a diplomat after younger brother Napoleon seized power, reorganized the government, and established himself as head of the French Consulate. Over the next few years, Joseph helped negotiate the Treaty of Luneville with Austria in 1801, and the Treaty of Amiens with Britain in 1802. However, his efforts to forge a permanent peace with the British came to naught, when Napoleon’s military ambitions led to a rupture and a resumption of war with Britain in 1803. In 1805, the Bourbon King Ferdinand IV of Naples signed a treaty of neutrality with Napoleon. However, he reneged a few days later, and openly sided with Austria and Russia when they declared war against France. Unfortunately for King Ferdinand, Napoleon crushed the Austro-Russian armies. The irate French emperor then turned his wrath on the Neapolitan monarch, and declared that King Ferdinand had forfeited his throne.

7. King Joseph Bonaparte of Naples and Sicily

Napoleon sent Joseph, along with a French army commanded by Marshall Massena, to conquer Naples. Ferdinand fled his kingdom, and on March 30^th, 1806, Napoleon issued a decree that installed Joseph as King of Naples and Sicily. The Kingdom of Naples and Sicily – of which Joseph Bonaparte controlled only the Naples part on the Italian mainland – was a backwards realm. It had suffered greatly from generations of misgovernment by corrupt and inept Bourbons. Joseph launched an ambitious reform program, and sought to transform Naples into a modern and well administered state, along the lines of Napoleonic France. Feudal privileges and taxes were abolished; military tribunals were established to suppress rampant banditry; monastic orders were suppressed and their properties nationalized; public works programs were instituted to employ the poor and improve the kingdom; and public schools to educate young girls, and a college to educate young women, were established.

6. Switching Crowns from Naples to Spain

The new king’s government was seen by most subjects as a vast improvement over the previous Bourbon regime, and Joseph Bonaparte settled down to reign as a popular and well liked monarch. He was thus not too thrilled when Napoleon made him switch crowns in 1808, and give up the Neapolitan throne in order to get crowned as king of Spain instead. As things turned out, Joseph’s unhappiness was justified: he left a kingdom where he had been extremely popular, for a kingdom where he was greatly hated. Napoleon had invaded Spain, dethroned its Bourbons royals, and eventually replaced them on the throne with his brother Joseph. The new king tried his best to win over the Spanish people. He learned their language, disciplined French troops when they mistreated his Spanish subjects, attended bullfights, and expressed his devotion to the Catholic Church. As seen below, it did him no good.

5. A Terrible Time in Spain

The Spanish were adamant in their refusal to put up with Joseph Bonaparte or the French, and rose in a massive revolt that drove Spain’s new king out of Madrid within three months of his arrival. Joseph begged Napoleon to let him return to Naples, where he could be more effective. L’Empereur ignored him, and sent a massive French army to restore Joseph to power. The result was a bitter and brutal guerrilla war that engulfed the country. Eventually – with the support of a British army under Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington – Joseph and the French were expelled from Spain. In the meantime, Napoleon’s empire began to crumble after his invasion of Russia ended in disaster, and allied armies steadily pushed the French back into Metropolitan France. When enemy troops entered Paris in 1814 and Napoleon was forced to abdicate, Joseph and his family fled to Switzerland.

4. A Dethroned King on the Lam

A year later, when Napoleon escaped from Elba and regained power, Joseph joined his younger brother in Paris. After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and second abdication, Joseph chartered an American ship, the Commerce, for an escape to the United States. He came up with a harebrained scheme to spirit his brother to freedom. He proposed to switch places with the former emperor, and impersonate Napoleon while the latter sailed in his place to America. The plan went nowhere. When he heard that Napoleon had surrendered to Captain Maitland of the British Royal Navy’s HMS Bellerophon, Joseph finally sailed off to the United States. He left his wife and daughters in Paris. They eventually moved to Frankfurt, and then to Brussels. En route, Joseph’s ship was boarded and inspected twice by the Royal Navy. However, he had fake identity papers, and they passed muster with the British inspectors.

3. The Bonaparte Who Made it to America

Joseph Bonaparte made it to the safety of New York in late August, 1815. He was accompanied by a Spanish officer who remained loyal, an interpreter, a personal secretary, and a cook. Joseph left New York for Washington, DC, where he hoped to meet President Madison. However, he was intercepted en route by a messenger who informed him that the American president would not meet him. So Joseph turned around, and set about to get comfortable and make the best of his new life in America. He managed to transfer a big chunk of his fortune, much of it in the form of Spanish royal jewels that he had grabbed on his way out of Spain, and invested it in his new country. In his first few years in the US, Joseph lived in New York City and Philadelphia, and his residence became a hub for French expatriates.

2. A King Bonaparte in New Jersey

Joseph Bonaparte bought a large land tract in Upstate New York that contained a 1200 acre lake that he named Lake Diana, and that is now known as Lake Bonaparte. He eventually bought an estate, Point Breeze, in Bordentown, New Jersey. Joseph spent significant time and effort to expand and landscape his New Jersey estate with extensive gardens in a picturesque style. Little did he know, but he was soon to meet a spooky beast in the Garden State. Unfortunately for the former monarch, Point Breeze was destroyed by a fire in 1820. So Joseph converted its sizable stables, which had survived the blaze, into a new mansion. There, he hosted and entertained many of the day’s prominent intellectuals and politicians, including John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and the Marquis de Lafayette.

1.     When Bonaparte Met the Jersey Devil

Another visitor to Point Breeze, albeit a less welcome one, was the Jersey Devil – a spooky mythical cross between a kangaroo, bat, and goat, that reportedly inhabits New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. Joseph Bonaparte claimed to have been out hunting in the woods near his estate, when he came across some weird tracks. He followed them, and received a great shock when he suddenly found himself face to face with the Jersey Devil. As the former king put it, the duo looked at each other for about a minute. Neither moved for what seemed like an eternity, then the spooky creature finally gave a hiss and flew away. Joseph Bonaparte’s stay in the US was eventually cut short by ill health, and he returned to Europe. He died in 1844 in Florence, Italy, and was buried in the Les Invalides in Paris.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

American Folklore – Joseph Bonaparte and the Jersey Devil

Encyclopedia Britannica – Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples and Spain

History Collection – ‘Death is Nothing’: The Seven Stages of Napoleon’s Rise to Power

McCartney, Clarence Edward Noble, and Dorrance, John Gordon – The Bonapartes in America (1939)

Mental Floss – The Last King of New Jersey: The Suburban Life of Napoleon’s Brother

National Public Radio – What If Napoleon Had Come to America?

New York Times, October 24th, 2008 – Digging Up the Home of That Other Bonaparte, in New Jersey

Stroud, Patricia Tyson – The Man Who Had Been King: The American Exile of Napoleon’s Brother Joseph (2014)