WALEWSKI-COLONNA, FLORIAN-ALEXANDRE-JOSEPH, Count. — Politician, b. 4 May 1810 at Walewice Castle near Warsaw, d. 27 Sept. 1868 at Strasbourg.
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. Later attached to the French legation in Buenos Aires, after the rise to the presidency of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte he became in 1849 plenipotentiary minister in Florence, ambassador to Naples, Madrid, and London. On 7 May 1855 he succeeded Drouyn de Lhuys as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Favourable to the European national movement without abandoning a conservative policy, he strove in particular to safeguard, after the events of 1859, the rights of the Holy See over the Legations. This brought him into conflict with the Emperor, who openly acknowledged the policy hitherto followed by W. in the pamphlet *Le Pape et le Congrès* by La Guéronnière. W. therefore resigned from the ministry in early January 1860. Deputy from 1865 to 1867, he was President of the Chamber, but, considered too accommodating toward the anti-imperial opposition, rather than renounce his impartiality in directing parliamentary work he withdrew from politics.