WALEWSKI-COLONNA, FLORIAN-ALEXANDRE-JOSEPH, count. — Statesman, born on 4 May 1810 at the castle of Walewice near Warsaw, died on 27 September 1868 in Strasbourg.
The natural son of Napoleon I and Maria Walewska, he was educated in Geneva; returning to Poland in 1824, he refused to enter the Russian army and settled in France. Subsequently attached to the French legation in Buenos Aires, after Luigi Napoleone
Bonaparte assumed the presidency he became, in 1849, plenipotentiary minister in Florence, ambassador in Naples, Madrid, and London. On 7 May 1855 he succeeded Drouyn de Lhuys as foreign minister. Favorable to the European nationalist movement, though without abandoning a conservative policy, he made particular efforts to guarantee, after the events of 1859, the rights of the Holy See over the Legations. This brought him into conflict with the Emperor, who openly disavowed the policy he had followed until then through the publication of La Guéronnière’s pamphlet Le Pape et le Congrès. W. consequently resigned from the ministry at the beginning of January 1860. A deputy from 1865 to 1867, he became president of the Chamber; but, being considered too accommodating toward the anti-imperial opposition, rather than relinquish his impartiality in directing parliamentary proceedings, he withdrew from politics.