Napoleon's stepson ran Italy, then refused to betray him or abandon it
Eugène de Beauharnais lost his father to the guillotine at twelve, gained Napoleon as a stepfather, and at 23 was governing the Kingdom of Italy. When the empire collapsed in 1814, he rejected pressure from his Bavarian father-in-law to switch sides, yet also declined to leave his kingdom to defend France.
Born in Paris on 3 September 1781 to two Martinique-born parents, Alexandre de Beauharnais and the future Empress Joséphine, Eugène saw his parents separate when he was three. His father, a Revolutionary general blamed for losing the Siege of Mainz, was guillotined on 23 July 1794, days before Robespierre fell. The boy soon joined the army as an orderly to General Lazare Hoche, and after his mother married Napoleon he served as his stepfather's aide in Italy and Egypt, where he was wounded at the Siege of Acre.
He helped reconcile Napoleon and Joséphine, estranged by mutual affairs, on their return in 1799, and charged with the Guard cavalry at Marengo. When Napoleon took Italy's Iron Crown in May 1805, after his brothers Joseph and Louis declined the throne, he named Eugène viceroy. A diplomatic marriage to Princess Augusta of Bavaria in January 1806 proved happy, and Napoleon formally adopted him, though he was barred from the French succession.
Historians rate him among Napoleon's most capable relatives, and his administration shows why: he fortified Mantua, built roads, restored the Venetian Arsenal, drained marshes near Verona and introduced the Napoleonic legal codes. As a general he lost at Sacile in April 1809 but won at the Piave and at Raab. In Russia he led the IV Corps of 80,000 men, fought at Borodino, and after Napoleon and Joachim Murat left the retreating army in December 1812, took charge of its remnants and led them back towards Leipzig.
In 1814 he fought a string of delaying actions in the Po Valley, then signed an armistice on 16 April, days after Napoleon abdicated. An uprising in Milan ended hopes of his own coronation. He retired to Munich, stayed neutral in the Hundred Days, and as Duke of Leuchtenberg collected art and lobbied for gentler treatment of the exiled Napoleon. He died on 21 February 1824, aged 42. His children married into thrones: one daughter became Queen of Sweden, another Empress of Brazil.
Source: Eugène de Beauharnais
