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 BONAPARTE 29 of Poland. He displayed considerable talent and activity as president of the imperial com- mission of the exposition of 1855, and in a scientific maritime excursion to the coasts of Scotland, Iceland, and Greenland in 1856, and was admitted to the academy of fine arts. In 1857 he acquitted himself successfully of a diplomatic mission by prevailing upon Prussia to relinquish her claims upon Neufchatel in favor of Switzerland, putting an end to that contest. In 1858 he was appointed to the newly created ministry of Algerian and co- lonial affairs, and held that office about nine months. His marriage on Jan. 30, 1859, with the princess Clotilde, daughter of King Victor Emanuel, was speedily followed by the Franco- Italian war against Austria, during which he was sent to Tuscany at the head of the fifth army corps; but though he crossed the Ap- ennines by forced marches, he reached head- quarters only to witness the conclusion of the preliminary treaty of peace of Villafranca, for the carrying out of which he was sent to Verona. In 1861 he went with his yacht to the United States, and leaving the princess Clotilde with the duchess d'Abrantes at New York, pro- ceeded to Washington, where Secretary Seward presented him to President Lincoln. He then visited Beauregard's headquarters at Manassas, and pushed as far as Richmond, escorted by the French minister Mercier. He was accom- panied by Maurice Sand, the son of his intimate friend Mme. Dudevant (George Sand), and others ; and he often expressed his sympathies with the cause of the Union and of slavery abolition. After his return he made in 1862 and 1863 remarkable speeches in the senate against the temporal power of the papacy and in favor of Polish nationality. In 1863 he visited the Suez canal, of which enterprise he became an advocate. At the inauguration of the statue of Napoleon I. in Ajaccio in 1865, he made a sensational oration, full of democratic sentiments, which proved still less palatable than his previous speeches to the emperor, who was then in Algeria, and from thence addressed an official reprimand to the prince. The latter immediately threw up all his public functions, including his membership of the council of re- gency, his opposition to the temporal power of the pope having converted the empress Eugenie, who had never been his friend, into his invete- rate enemy. But he speedily regained the con- fidence of the emperor, who apparently regarded his vagaries as harmless, and even in some re- spects as useful. In 1868 he visited the North German states, and a political object was as- cribed to this as to his other journeys in that year, especially as he occasionally received official deputations and was fond of assuming the attitude of a sovereign prince. Though he constantly coquetted with the ultra radicals, they never ceased to regard him as in reality an imperialist, possibly desirous of supplanting his cousin ; while the emperor himself even re- frained from rebukinj* his renewed violence in 1869, though his speech on that occasion was publicly disavowed by Rouher, president of the senate. Prince Napoleon had long been nick-named Plon-Plon, his ambition as well as his attempt to reconcile imperialistic with ex- treme liberal institutions subjecting him to crit- icism, to which the grotesque contrast between his impetuous demonstrations and placid ap- pearance added a tinge of the ridiculous. After the outbreak of the Franco-German war, he made unavailing efforts to draw Italy into the contest against Prussia, and at the close of 1871 he declined to accept an election to the gen- eral council of Corsica. In October, 1872, he was ordered to leave Paris, and on his resist- ing he was forcibly expelled. The prince insti- tuted legal proceedings against the prefect and commissary of police who arrested him in the house of his friend M. Richard, claiming 200,- 000 francs damages. He afterward returned to his chateau of Prangins near Geneva with his wife and children, consisting of two sons, born in 1862 and 1864, and a daughter, in 1866. They occasionally reside also in their mansion at Mi- lan. V. MatMIde Lsetitia WUhelmlne, sister of the preceding, popularly known as Princess Ma- thilde, born in Trieste, May 27, 1820. She was early distinguished by her literary and artistic tastes, and in 1841 married in Florence the Rus- sian count Anatol Demidoff, whom the grand duke of Tuscany made prince of San Donate. He having agreed to bring up the prospective children in the Roman Catholic faith, the em- peror Nicholas deprived him of his office of chamberlain. But they had no issue, and when Mathilde went to St. Petersburg the czar be- came her friend, and he corresponded with her till the Crimean war ; and on her separation in 1845 from her husband, he insisted upon his settling on his wife an annuity of 200,000 ru- bles. The princess Mathilde presided over the household of Louis Napoleon previous to his marriage with Eugenie, and afterward con- tinued to occupy a prominent position at the imperial court until the Franco-German war, when the downfall of her cousin deprived her of her large endowments; and the death of her former husband in April,'1870, also cut off the income which she had derived from him. Her palace in Paris and her summer residence at St. Gratien, near the lake of Enghien, were the most distinguished literary and artistic cen- tres of the second empire ; and she excels as an artist, as is attested by her fine paintings and etchings. After the death of Sainte-Beuve in 1869, the newspapers engaged in a lively controversy about her letters to him ; and her special favorite was Theophile Gautier, whose funeral she attended in October, 1872, Presi- dent Thiers having permitted her to continue to reside in Paris. BONAPARTE, Joseph, successively king of Na- ples and of Spain, eldest brother of Napoleon I., born at Corte, Corsica, Jan. 7, 1768, died in Florence, July 28, 1844. The grand duke of Tus- cany having recommended Charles Bonaparte