Alexandre Colonna-Walewski occupation writer
Early years
Walewski was born at Walewice, near Warsaw in Poland from Countess Marie Walewska and her husband Athanasius, Count Walewski. He was rumoured to be the unacknowledged son of Napoleon I, although Athanasius legally acknowledged him as his own son. In 2013, published scholarship comparing DNA haplotype evidence taken from Emperor Napoleon, from his brother King Jérôme Bonaparte's descendant Charles, Prince Napoléon and from Colonna-Walewski's descendant indicated Alexandre's membership in the genetic male-line of the imperial House of Bonaparte.Aged fourteen, Walewski refused to join the Imperial Russian army and fled to London, thence to Paris where the French government refused Tsar Alexander I's demands for his extradition to Russia.Upon the accession of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans to the French throne in 1830, Walewski was dispatched to Poland, later the same year being entrusted by the leaders of the Polish November Uprising of 1830 as a diplomatic envoy to the Court of St James's. After the Fall of Warsaw, he took out letters of French naturalization and joined the French army, being in action in Algeria as a captain in the Chasseurs d'Afrique of the French Foreign Legion. In 1837 he resigned his commission to begin writing plays and working as a journalist for the press. He is said to have collaborated with the elder Dumas on Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle and a comedy of his, L'Ecole du monde, was produced at the Theâtre Français in 1840.
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