Duc de Morny
| Charles de Morny | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 15 September 1811 |
| Died | 10 March 1865 (aged 53) |
| Title | Duc de Morny |
| Spouse(s) | Princess Sofia Sergeyevna Trubetskaya |
| Issue |
Marie Eugenie de Morny, Countess of La Corzana Auguste Charles, 2e Duc de Morny Serge de Morny Sophie de Morny |
| Parents |
Charles Joseph de Flahaut Hortense de Beauharnais |
Charles Auguste Louis Joseph Demorny/de Morny, 1er Duc de Morny [ʃaʁl oɡyst lwi ʒɔzɛf dəmɔʁni] (15–16 September 1811, Switzerland – 10 March 1865, Paris) was a French .
Mornywas born in Switzerland, and was the extra-marital son of Hortense de Beauharnais (the wife of Louis Bonaparte and queen of Holland) and Charles Joseph, Comte de Flahaut, making him half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III and grandson of Talleyrand. His birth was duly registered in a misleading certificate, which made him the legitimate son of Auguste Jean Hyacinthe Demorny, and born in Paris on 23 October 1811,</ref> and described as a landowner of St. Domingo. M. Demorny was in fact an officer in the Prussian army and a native of St. Domingo, though he owned no land there or elsewhere.
Morny was educated by his grandmother, Adelaïde Filleul. After a brilliant school and college career the future duc de Morny received a commission in the army, and the next year he entered the staff college. The comte de Morny, as he was called by a polite fiction, served in Algeria in 1834–1835 as aide-de-camp to General Camille Alphonse Trezel, whose life he saved under the walls of Constantine.
When Morny returned to Paris in 1838, he secured a solid position in the business world by establishing of a major beet-sugar industry at Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne and by writing a pamphlet Sur la question des sucres in 1838. In these and other lucrative speculations he was helped by his mistress Françoise Mosselman, the beautiful and wealthy wife of the Belgian ambassador, Charles Aimé Joseph Le Hon, Comte Le Hon. Eventually there were few great commercial enterprises in Paris in which he did not have an interest.
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