#bernadotte

Two Centuries of Bernadotte Portraits

Napolèon, Desirée Clary, and Bernadotte

By Louis-Félix Amiel

Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia with her son Prince Gustaf Lennart Nicolaus Paul Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg, Prince Lennart of Sweden, Duke of Småland

In the summer of 1789, amid the early days of the French Revolution, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte—then a 26-year-old sergeant in the Royal-La-Marine regiment—appears to have fathered a child in Grenoble, France.

On August 4, 1789, a baby girl named Olympe-Louise-Catherine Lamour was born to Cathérine Josèphe Lamour, a 17-year-old seamstress and daughter of a grocer. The baptismal certificate, recorded at Saint-Louis Church on August 5, unambiguously names "Bernardotte, sergeant au régiment Royal-la-Marine" as the father. It reads:

"On August 5, 1789, I baptized Olympe-Louise-Catherine, born yesterday, the natural daughter of Cathérine Lamour and of one named Bernardotte, sergeant in the Royal-la-Marine regiment; declaration received from Mr. Girard, notary in Grenoble. The godfather was Louis Rolland, music master; the godmother, Mademoiselle Cathérine Jacob. The witnesses have signed. — Rolland."

More tellingly, a notarial declaration dated May 8, 1789, confirms that Bernadotte had already acknowledged paternity three months before the child’s birth.

Lamour’s youth and social position—along with Bernadotte’s military movements—make it unlikely the relationship was enduring or particularly significant.

Tragically, the infant Olympe-Louise was placed in a local orphanage shortly after birth and died less than a month later, on September 2, 1789. Her mother, Catherine Lamour, lived until October 27, 1808, dying at the age of 37 after an illness that lasted two months. She is recorded as a glove seamstress ("couseuse de gants") at the time of her death.

The primary documents—baptismal, hospital, and notarial records—offer a sobering and factual account of what was likely a short-lived liaison in Bernadotte’s pre-imperial life. Though seldom mentioned in biographies, this moment stands as a poignant and very human footnote in the life of a man who would later become King Charles XIV John of Sweden and Norway.

With a Napoléon cameo