Louis was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, on 2 September, 1778. He was a younger brother of Joseph, Napoleon, Lucien, and Elisa Bonaparte, and the older brother of Pauline, Caroline, and Jérôme Bonaparte. Louis' godparents were the island's governor, Mr de Marbeuf and the wife of the intendant, Bertrand de Boucheporn, whom Letizia and her husband, Carlo, had befriended.
His education was supervised by Napoleon, who in 1795 procured his admission to the military school at Châlons.
Louis served with Napoleon in the Italian campaign of 1796-1797 and as his aide-de-camp in Egypt, 1798-1799. Louis was promoted to the rank of general in 1804 and entered the Council of State. In 1805 he became governor of Paris. Napoleon proclaimed Louis king of Holland, June 6, 1806. Louis sought to promote the welfare of the Dutch but was reproached by Napoleon with being too lenient. Relations between the two brothers became further embittered, and in 1808, when Napoleon offered Louis the vacant throne of Spain, Louis refused, allowing this award to go to Joseph, another brother. In 1809, after Napoleon had resolved virtually to annex Holland in order to stop the Dutch from trading secretly with England and so strengthen the Continental System, Louis went to Paris in an attempt to gain better terms. He failed in this and also in efforts to secure a divorce from Hortense. After the collapse of negotiations with Great Britain in the spring of 1810, Napoleon again pressed Louis to stop the secret Dutch trade with the English. When, finally, he sent French troops against the Dutch capital, Louis fled. He assumed the title of the count of Saint-Leu and finally settled at Teplice in Bohemia. On July 9, 1810, Holland became a part of the French Empire. The rest of Louis' life was spent chiefly at Rome. He engaged mainly in literary and philosophic studies and devoted himself to the fortunes of his sons. Louis died at Leghorn, Italy, on July 25, 1846.
Napoleon had intended for his younger brother to be little more than a French prefect of Holland. However, Louis had his own mind, and tried to be a responsible and independent ruler. In an effort to endear himself to his adopted country, he tried to learn the Dutch language; he called himself Lodewijk I (adopting the Dutch form of his name) and declared himself Dutch rather than French. He guarded the welfare of his subjects, but unwillingness to join the Continental System brought him into conflict with the emperor.
Louis supposedly had a poor mental condition at times, and supposedly suffered from periods of mental illness. These periods of depression or mental instability (records fail to distinguish) would plague Louis, and consequently Napoleon, until his death.
In 1802 he married Hortense Beauharnais, daughter of Josephine, Napoleon's first wife. Beset by jealousies, quarrels, slander, and hatred between the Bonaparte and Beauharnais families, the marriage was ill fated and ended in final separation in 1810. Hortense de Beauharnais gave birth to three sons which were officially claimed by Louis Bonaparte, despite his own doubts about their paternity: Napoleon Charles Bonaparte, Napoleon Louis Bonaparte and Charles Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte.
