Aided by the consequential dowry provided by her parents, the plain 22-year-old Marie Julie Clary, known as Julie Clary, married Napoleon Bonaparte’s elder brother, Joseph, in Cuges-les-Pins in the Bouches-du-Rhône, France in 1794. Her newlywed husband would later become King of Naples between 1806 and 1808, and King of Spain and the Spanish West Indies from mid-1808 until 1813, making her a queen. Likewise, Julie’s younger and prettier sister, Bernardine Eugénie Désirée, referred to as Désirée, became Queen of Sweden and Norway from 1818 to 1844 as the wife of King Charles XIV John, otherwise known as the French general and politician Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, founder of the House of Bernadotte. Before marrying Bernadotte, she had been engaged to Napoleon until he met and married Joséphine de Beauharnais.
Born in Marseille, Julie, her sister and brother were the best known of nine siblings of a wealthy silk manufacturer and soap merchant and his second wife, who was Irish. The three of them remained close all their lives, and their brother, Nicolas Joseph Clary, was made 1st Count Clary in 1815. In 1795, Julie’s husband was sent on a diplomatic mission to Genoa to investigate how Corsica could be recaptured. In 1796, Napoleon appointed him to the Italian army and called upon him for military-related negotiations. Towards the end of the year, Joseph was sent to the reconquered Corsica to reorganize the administration. In March 1797, he was given the position of resident at the court of Parma, while, after her husband was appointed ambassador to the Papal States in Rome in May 1797, Julie accompanied him there and settled with him in Paris in 1804.
In the same year, after crowning himself emperor, Napoleon named Joseph an imperial prince, making Julie a princess and she, with her grudging sisters-in-law, was asked to carry the heavy velvet train of the Empress Josephine at her coronation. Julie did not enjoy life as part of the imperial court, preferring a quieter life in the château in Mortefontaine, Oise, which Joseph had bought in 1800. By this time, Julie must also have been well aware of her husband’s numerous adulterous affairs. Even after Joseph was made King of Naples, she did not join him there until 1808 upon the insistence of Napoleon since Joseph was facing an uprising. The Neapolitans liked her for her sweet and gentle manner as well as her willingness to help those in need. In the end, both she and her husband left Naples with regret. Later, when he reluctantly moved to Spain, she remained in Mortefontaine and never joined him there, leading the Spaniards to call her the “Absent Queen” and him the “Intruder King.”
Julia proved to be a wise councillor to him nonetheless, informing him about the intrigues at the Imperial Court and Napoleon’s intentions regarding Joseph’s new kingdom. However, opposition to the French occupation of their country was so strong that a series of military defeats of the French Imperial Army resulted in Joseph fleeing Madrid a final time after the French lost the Battle of Vitoria in June 1813. This forced Joseph to abdicate and return to Paris.
During the War of the Sixth Coalition, Julie gave refuge to Désirée and her sister-in-law, Catharina of Württemberg, at her home in Mortefontaine as they belonged to countries that were part of the enemy camp. Following the fall of Paris in 1814, she also sought shelter there. The Treaty of Fontainebleau signed in April 1814 between Napoleon and representatives of the victorious allied forces led to Napoleon’s abdication and his exile on Elba. This prompted Julie’s move to Prangins Castle in Switzerland, which Joseph had purchased that year. After the brief interval of the “100 days”, then Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and final exile on Saint Helena, the members of the Bonaparte family, including Julie, were also exiled from France.
Joseph sought a safe haven in the United States in 1817, under the name of Count of Survilliers, where he built a first estate in Point Breeze, Philadelphia and a second property in Bordentown, New Jersey. They were said to be filled with paintings and valuable objects he had purloined on leaving Spain. Julie was initially due to join him there, but her declining health made this impossible. He would remain in America for almost two decades, living with an American mistress and their two illegitimate children. When he was finally allowed to return to Europe, he lived in London until 1838 before returning briefly to Point Breeze.
In 1839, he was again in Europe, where he joined his invalid wife, who was now living in the Palazzo Serristori in Florence, after he had received the Grand Duke’s permission to do so. Julie was now confined to a chaise longue for much of the time, but she had lived in Frankfurt in the intervening years, often visiting Désirée in Paris for prolonged periods and, after Napoleon’s second abdication, spending time in Brussels. A plaque on an external wall of Palazzo Serristori marks Joseph and his family’s stay there. In 1840, he suffered a major stroke and died in Florence four years later, aged 78. He was buried in the Basilica of Santa Croce alongside one of his three daughters by Julie, Charlotte (1802-39), the only one of them who had visited him in America between 1821 and 1824, and who had died in childbirth aged 36, and Julie, who died eight months after him at 73 years old. In 1862, on instructions from his nephew Napoleon III, Joseph’s remains were moved to Paris and placed in the Hôtel des Invalides, where they remain to this day.
