The French statesman Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844), older brother of Napoleon I, was king of Naples from 1806 to 1808 and king of Spain from 1808 to 1813.

Joseph Bonaparte was born on Jan. 7, 1768, in Corte, Corsica. He was the third child of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino but the first to survive infancy. He was educated in Corsica and France and studied law at Pisa. In the Corsican civil war, which marked the early years of the French Revolution, he sided with the French, as did his brother Napoleon. When the anti-French forces were victorious, he and the entire Bonaparte family fled to the Continent.

Settling in Marseilles, he married Julie Clary, the daughter of a local merchant. During the first years of the Directory (1795-1799), Joseph served as a foreign diplomat. In 1796 he helped to negotiate the armistice with Sardinia; in 1797 he was minister to Parma and later Rome. He then...