Napoleon’s only legitimate son lived just 21 years, spending most of them as a virtual prisoner of the Austrian court. Born with the grand title “King of Rome,” he was stripped of his identity, separated from both parents, and died of tuberculosis in Vienna in 1832, never having set foot in France after the age of three.
Born as Heir to an Empire
Napoleon François Charles Joseph Bonaparte was born on March 20, 1811, at the Tuileries Palace in Paris. His mother was Empress Marie Louise, daughter of Austrian Emperor Francis I, making the boy both a Bonaparte and a Habsburg. Napoleon I gave his newborn son the title King of Rome and designated him Prince Imperial and heir to the French throne. For the first few years of his life, he was one of the most important children in Europe.
A Three-Day Reign at Age Four
When Napoleon abdicated after his defeat at Waterloo in June 1815, he did so specifically in favor of his four-year-old son. On June 24, the provisional government in Paris proclaimed the abdication and initially recognized the boy as Napoleon II. Bonapartist supporters argued that if the son wasn’t recognized as emperor, the abdication itself could be considered void.
It didn’t matter. Two days later, the government issued its public proclamations “in the name of the French people” rather than in the name of Napoleon II. After a nominal reign of roughly three days, the child emperor was quietly replaced by the restored Bourbon monarchy. He never exercised any actual power.
Growing Up in the Austrian Court
With Napoleon exiled to Saint Helena, young “Franz,” as the Austrians called him, was raised at the Habsburg court in Vienna under the watch of his grandfather, Emperor Francis I. The Congress of Vienna gave his mother Marie Louise the Duchy of Parma but specifically prevented her from bringing her son to Italy. Mother and child were separated.
In 1818, the boy was given the title Duke of Reichstadt, a deliberate downgrade from his French titles. His grandfather reportedly showed him genuine affection, but Austrian ministers and nationalists worked to sideline him into irrelevance. They wanted to make sure Napoleon’s son would never become a rallying point for French Bonapartists. His French identity was systematically erased: his name was Germanized, his household was Austrian, and his connection to his father’s legacy was discouraged at every turn.
Franz grew resentful. As he got older, he began identifying as Napoleon II and surrounded himself with French courtiers. His relationship with his mother deteriorated sharply when he learned she had secretly borne two illegitimate children with Count Neipperg, the Austrian officer who had been assigned to accompany her to Parma and whom she later married. The discovery prompted one of his most bitter recorded remarks: “If Josephine had been my mother, my father would not have been buried at Saint Helena, and I should not be at Vienna. My mother is kind but weak; she was not the wife my father deserved.”
He never saw or heard from his father again after 1815. Napoleon died on Saint Helena in 1821, when his son was ten years old.
A Serious Military Career Cut Short
Despite the Austrian court’s efforts to neutralize him politically, the Duke of Reichstadt threw himself into military life with real passion. At age seven, he wore a corporal’s uniform to state occasions. By eleven, he was a cadet-sergeant, sometimes leading the changing of the guard at imperial residences. Through his teens, he became skilled in fencing, horsemanship, and marksmanship with both musket and pistol.
His military education was no ceremonial exercise. He studied fortifications, artillery, infantry drill, and the military code. He read treatises on strategy, including works by Archduke Charles of Austria. His grandfather commissioned him as a captain assigned to a Tyrolean cavalry regiment in Vienna, and the appointment thrilled him. “Now, we will work seriously at all branches of military science; nothing shall be too difficult for me,” he wrote to his military tutor.
At nineteen, he was promoted to major and then lieutenant colonel within four months. He told a close friend that if fate wouldn’t allow him to return to France, he wanted to become a great Austrian military leader, adding pointedly that he was “ready to defend Austria with my sword against any foe, not against France.” He began active battalion command in June 1831, at age twenty, leading Hungarian infantry troops based near Vienna. He developed a deep respect for military rank, reportedly honoring it above imperial titles.
Death at 21
Reichstadt’s military career lasted barely a year. He had been in declining health, and tuberculosis overtook him quickly. He died on July 22, 1832, at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. He was 21 years old. During his final illness, he was promoted to honorary colonel of his regiment, and he received a funeral with full military honors before being laid to rest in the imperial crypt alongside generations of Habsburgs.
His death removed the most direct Bonapartist threat to European stability. Without a living son of Napoleon, the movement eventually coalesced around his nephew, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who would seize power in 1848 and become Emperor Napoleon III.
His Remains Returned to Paris
For over a century, the Duke of Reichstadt lay buried in Vienna. Then, on December 15, 1940, Adolf Hitler ordered his remains transferred from Vienna to Les Invalides in Paris, where Napoleon I is entombed. Hitler intended the gesture as a diplomatic gift to occupied France, though the French public largely viewed it as a hollow propaganda move during a period of national humiliation.
Today, father and son rest in the same building. Napoleon I lies in his massive red quartzite sarcophagus in the center of Les Invalides, while his son’s remains occupy a far more modest place nearby. The boy who was born King of Rome, briefly declared Emperor of the French, raised as an Austrian duke, and dead before his twenty-second birthday finally made it back to France, 108 years too late.