Charlotte Bonaparte Gabrielli

Filistine Charlotte Bonaparte Gabrielli (born Filistine Charlotte Bonaparte; 22 February 1795 – 13 May 1865) was a French Napoleonic princess and the eldest daughter of Lucien Bonaparte and Christine Boyer. She became princess Gabrielli following her marriage to Mario Gabrielli, prince of Prossedi and Roccasecca, Duke of Pisterzo. In Italy, she was known as Carlotta. Biography Filistine Charlotte Bonaparte was born on 22 February 1795 in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, the daughter of Lucien Bonaparte (1775–1840), the first prince of Canino and Musignano, and his first wife Christine Boyer (1773–1800), herself the daughter of Pierre Boyer. She was the granddaughter of Carlo Buonaparte and his wife Letizia Ramolino, and the niece of the emperor Napoleon I. Her paternal grandmother, Letizia Ramolino (Madame Mère), nicknamed her "Lolotte." When she was six years of age and Christine-Egypta, her younger sister, was two, their mother died at Le Plessis of a pulmonary disease while pregnant with a third sibling. She spent her childhood in France and Spain and from 1804 onwards was educated by nuns in Italy. When Napoleon's first marriage to Joséphine de Beauharnais was annulled, the possibility that he might marry Charlotte was suggested by her aunt Pauline Bonaparte, as this would have consolidated family power. Under pressure from Napoleon, who wished to arrange her marriage, she was sent to Paris stay with his mother, Madame Mère. Marriage arrangements to the Spanish prince Ferdinando of the Asturias (later Ferdinand VII of Spain) and the grand-duke of Wurzburg (later Ferdinand III of Tuscany) were planned for her by Napoleon but eventually not concluded. Charlotte continuously wrote letters to her father which complained of the hypocritical French court and the ugliness of her female relatives. She even criticized Napoleon himself, and when these letters were intercepted by his secret police, she was sent home. As a consequence of the increasingly abrasive relationship between Lucien and Napoleon, Charlotte, her father, her stepmother Alexandrine de Bleschamp, siblings and household attempted to sail to the United States on 5 August 1810. They were captured by the British and forced to reside, first in the British colony of Malta, and then in England until the fall of Napoleon in May 1814.