Auguste de Beauharnais, 2nd Duke of Leuchtenberg

Auguste de Beauharnais
Duke of Leuchtenberg and Prince of Eichstätt Prince Consort of Portugal
Duke of Leuchtenberg
Tenure	21 February 1824 – 28 March 1835
Predecessor	Eugène de Beauharnais
Successor	Maximilian de Beauharnais
Prince of Eichstätt
Tenure	21 February 1824 – 28 March 1835
Predecessor	Eugène de Beauharnais
Successor	Maximilian de Beauharnais
Spouse	Maria II of Portugal
Full name
Auguste Charles Eugène Napoléon de Beauharnais
House	House of Beauharnais
Father	Eugène de Beauharnais
Mother	Princess Augusta of Bavaria
Born	9 December 1810(1810-12-09) Milan, Lombardy
Died	28 March 1835(1835-03-28) (aged 24) Lisbon, Portugal
Religion	Roman Catholicism

Auguste Charles Eugène Napoléon de Beauharnais, 2nd Duke of Leuchtenberg (9 December 1810 – 28 March 1835) was the first Prince consort of Maria II of Portugal.

Family

Born in Milan, Lombardy, he was the eldest son of Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon I's stepson, and Princess Augusta of Bavaria. His dynastic connections were exceptional, considering his paternal lineage: Among his sisters were Joséphine, Queen consort of Oscar I of Sweden and Amélie, Empress consort of his future father-in-law Pedro I of Brazil. Later, his brother Maximilian would wed Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia, eldest daughter of Tsar Nicholas I.

Duke of Leuchtenberg

His maternal grandfather, King Maximilian I of Bavaria, had given Eugène the title Duke of Leuchtenberg on 14 November 1817, after the loss in 1815 of his Napoleonic titles and the associated expectancies of the kingdom of Italy and the grandduchy of Frankfurt. Despite the promise of an independent principality inserted into the final treaty, the Congress of Vienna adjourned without creating a state for Eugène, so Auguste and his siblings had no inheritance. To the empty Leuchtenberg ducal title had been added the estate of Eichstätt in dowry, made a nominal principality, also by King Maximilian. As Eugène's eldest son, Auguste was heir to this modest property, which he inherited when Eugène died on 21 February 1824.

On 4 February 1831 Leuchtenberg was one of three candidates for the throne of the newly-independent Belgium, his Napoleonic connections allaying the concerns of some of the Great Powers, worried that the breakaway Roman Catholic realm might otherwise ally itself too closely with the likewise Catholic and revolutionary "bourgeois monarchy" of Orléans France. But in the election by the Belgian National Congress Auguste came in second, after the Citizen King's younger son, Prince Louis, Duke of Nemours, though ahead of the Habsburg candidate, Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen. In the event, none of these men attained the Belgian throne, which went to Britain's candidate, the freshly widowed, wily Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.

Prince Consort of Portugal

On 26 May 1834, young Maria II was restored to the throne of Portugal, gifted to her by the abdication – and subsequent conquest in war – of her father, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil, doing battle against the usurpation of his rebellious younger brother, Dom Miguel.

Maria's childhood betrothal to Dom Miguel was broken so that a more pliant husband could be found to beget a new Portuguese dynasty, one whose loyalty might prove more trustworthy if he had no other prospects, such that he would be entirely beholden for his dynastic fortune to Portugal's constitutional regime. The Queen obligingly settled on Auguste de Beauharnais who, once again, proved unthreatening to the Great Powers because of his lack of membership in an already reigning dynasty and lack of conflicting foreign obligations or ambitions. He was also the eldest brother of Maria's stepmother Empress Amélie, her late father's second wife.

Auguste and Maria II were married by proxy in Munich on 1 December 1834. The groom was almost twenty-four years old and the bride only fifteen years old. On his wedding day his bride conferred upon him the Brazilian and Portuguese style of His Imperial and Royal Highness The Prince Consort of Portugal, Duke of Santa Cruz.

He arrived in Portugal shortly thereafter and the couple were wed in person in Lisbon on 26 January 1835. However Auguste fell ill and died only two months later.

Childless at the time of his death, Auguste left as heir in Bavaria his younger brother, who became Maximilian, 3rd Duke of Leuchtenberg and briefly Auguste's successor in ownership of Eichstätt which, however, he returned to the Bavarian king in 1855 upon deciding to make his home in Russia, the realm of his own father-in-law.

A year later Maria II would marry Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a nephew of the Coburg prince who had beat out her first husband in competition for the constitutional crown of Belgium.

Because Auguste died before fathering an heir to the Portuguese throne, he never obtained the title of King Consort, which Maria's next husband did obtain in 1837, becoming founder of the Coburg-Braganza dynasty.

Ancestry

External links

• A Beauharnais genealogy
• A listing of the Ducal family of Leuchtenberg

Auguste de Beauharnais, 2nd Duke of Leuchtenberg House of Beauharnais Born: 9 December 1810 Died: 28 March 1835
German nobility
Preceded by Eugène de Beauharnais	Duke of Leuchtenberg 21 February 1824 – 28 March 1835	Succeeded by Maximilian, Duke of Leuchtenberg
Portuguese royalty
Preceded by Maria Leopoldina of Austria	Royal consort of Portugal 26 January – 28 March 1835	Succeeded by Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
Brazilian royalty
Preceded by New title	Duke of Santa Cruz 5 November 1829 – 28 March 1835	Succeeded by extinct

Persondata
Name	Beauharnais, Auguste De, 2nd Duke Of Leuchtenberg
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	9 December 1810
Place of birth	Milan, Lombardy
Date of death	28 March 1835
Place of death	Lisbon, Portugal