Historical Figures

Walewska Marie (1786 - 1817)

Marie Walewska was Napoleon I's most famous mistress. Sent to the emperor by Polish partisans in order to bribe him, Marie manages to seduce the emperor who will fall in love with her. Taking the cause of his mistress, the Emperor created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in 1807. Marie Walewska gave him a son:Alexander, Count Walewski who would become a politician in France and Poland. Having become the widow of her first husband, she was forced to marry Count Philippe Antoine d'Ornano, a distant cousin of Napoleon, who would become Marshal of France. She died in childbirth a year later.