Louis Bonaparte was a monarch in his own right and the brother and father of two others. He was King of Holland for four years in the early 19th Century.

He was born on September 2, 1778, in Ajaccio, Corsica. He was the fifth child of parents Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino. Their oldest child, Joseph, served as King of Spain for a time; their second-oldest child, Napoleon, was the most famous of all, advancing the ranks of the French Revolutionary Army and then presiding over a grand French expansion throughout Europe.

Louis served in the army from an early age and advanced quickly up the ranks, achieving the title of general by the time he was 25. He went with Napoleon's army to Egypt and then helped his brother overthrow the French Directory, replacing it with the Consulate, of which Napoleon was First Consul.

Rewarding Louis for his efforts, Napoleon solved the problem of a recalcitrant Netherlands by ending the Batavian Republic in favor of the Kingdom of Holland. Louis took the title King of Holland on June 5, 1806.

Louis had played a role in his older brother's successes, and he understood that he was to be a ruler who nonetheless took orders from another. However, Louis developed an affinity for the people he ruled, styling himself King Lodewijk, attempting to learning the Dutch language and requiring his ministers and advisers to speak it and not French. When Napoleon, gearing up for an invasion of Russia, called for Louis to institute military conscription, the younger Bonaparte refused. Skating on thin ice, Louis persevered, refusing to combat smuggling, to which many of his citizens had resorted as a means to overcome the depressed economy affected in part by Napoleon's Continental System. The French response was to deploy forces of customs inspectors throughout the Dutch countryside. When U.K. troops invaded Walcheren in 1809 and Louis refused to send in a defense, Napoleon had had enough. On July 1, 1810, Louis abdicated his throne, in the wake of France's annexation of the kingdom.

In 1802, Louis had married Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter of Josephine Bonaparte, Napoleon's first wife. They had three children: Napoleon Charles, born in 1802, died of illness in 1807; Napoleon Louis, born in 1804, succeeded his father as monarch, ruling as Lodewijk for a short time; Charles Louis-Napoleon, born in 1808, became Emperor Napoleon III.

Louis returned to Paris after his abdication, assuming the title Count of Saint-Leu and accepting the honorary title of Constable of France. He then accepted the offer of Austrian Emperor Francis I to shelter in that empire. Louis did so, for two years, absorbing himself in writing.

He asked to return to the Netherlands but was rebuffed, first by his imperial brother and then by King William I of the Netherlands. His successor, William II, relented, and Louis visited in 1840. He found some affection from people who remembered him.

By this time, his wife had died. He returned to France and enjoyed some acclaim as the rightful successor to Napoleon as emperor. That succession did not occur. Louis died on July 25, 1846 in Livorno, Italy.