In 1806, Napoleon established the Kingdom of Holland in place of the Batavian Republic, appointing Louis as the new king. In 1802, he married his step-niece Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter of Empress Joséphine (Napoleon's wife). Louis followed his older brothers into the French Army, where he benefited from Napoleon's patronage. He and his siblings were all born on Corsica, which had been conquered by France less than a decade before his birth. Louis was the fifth surviving child and fourth surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino, out of eight children who lived past infancy. In that capacity he was known as Louis I ( Dutch: Lodewijk I ). He was a monarch in his own right from 1806 to 1810, ruling over the Kingdom of Holland (a French client state roughly corresponding to the modern-day Kingdom of the Netherlands). Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (born Luigi Buonaparte 2 September 1778 – 25 July 1846) was a younger brother of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French.
