Eléonore Denuelle de La Plaigne

Eleonore Louise Catherine Denuelle de la Plaigne (* 1787 in Paris, † 1868 in Paris) was the mistress of Napoleon Bonaparte and the mother of his first son, Charles Léon Denuelle.

Life

Although she came from a rather poor merchant family, her parents sent her to one of the most prestigious boarding schools in France, probably in the hope of being able to marry their daughter later "good" or to enable it to gainful employment. Both did not immediately fulfilled, and the greater was the joy, as a - as it turned out - self-appointed officer stopped by the hand of their daughter. The seemingly good match soon proved to be unemployed and impoverished. After two months of marriage her husband was sentenced to two years in prison, leaving Eleanor destitute. Despite the disgrace her former headmistress helped her to a place as the home of Caroline Bonaparte 's reader, married Murat. Caroline apparently pursued from the beginning the goal of making Eleonore mistress of her brother Napoleon, likely to harm her hated sister Josephine. Eleonore turn quickly realized the benefits of such liaison and endured the most annoying together with the emperor, by presenting the clock and so shortened his presence in her bedroom. In April 1806 she was divorced from her husband, took her maiden name again and was pregnant.

Napoleon was convinced to have proved his fertility. His own law forbade him to use an illegitimate child as his heir. And so he did not allow it, that the boy was given the name Napoleon, but only that he was named after the second half of his name, Léon. However, he raised the supposed son of a Count and secured him off financially. To Eleanor, however, he broke off all contact.

1808 Eleanor married an officer, but she lost her husband in Napoleon's Russian campaign. 1814, after the abdication of Napoleon, she married a Major Invasion of the Bavarian troops, who later ascended even to the Messenger of the Baden dynasty. In 1868 she died in Paris.