In 1816, escaping from the arrest with which he was threatened, after having written to urge Murat to action with fatal effect, Joseph joined Napoleon in Paris, and appeared at the Champ de Mai, sitting also in the Chamber of Peers, but, as before, putting forward ridiculous pretensions as to his inherent right to the peerage, and claiming a special seat.  In fact, he never could realise how entirely he owed any position to the brother he wished to treat as an equal.

He remained in Paris during the brief campaign, and after Waterloo was concealed in the house of the Swedish Ambassador, where his sister-in-law, the Crown Princess of Sweden, the wife of Bernadotte, was living.  Muffling, the Prussian Governor of Paris, wished to arrest him, but as the Governor could not violate the domicile of an Ambassador, he had to apply to the Czar, who arranged for the escape of the ex-King before the Governor could seize him Joseph went to the coast, pretty much following the route of Napoleon.  He was arrested once at Saintes, but was allowed to proceed, and he met his brother on the 4th of July, at Rochefort.

It is significant as to the possibility of the escape of Napoleon that Joseph succeeded in getting on the brig Commerce as “M.  Bouchard,” and, though the ship was thrice searched by the English, he got to New York on the 28th of August, where he was mistaken for Carnot.  He was well received, and, taking the title of Comte de Survilliers, he first lived at Lansdowne, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, where he afterwards always passed part of the year while he was in America.  He also bought the property of Point Breeze, at Bordentown, on the Delaware, where he built a house with a fine view of the river.  This first house was burnt down, but he erected another, where he lived in some state and in great comfort, displaying his jewels and pictures to his admiring neighbours, and showing kindness to impecunious nephews.

The news of the Revolution of July in 1830, which drove Charles X. from the throne, excited Joseph’s hopes for the family of which he considered himself the Regent, and he applied to Metternich to get the Austrian Government to allow or assist in the placing his nephew, the Duke of Reichstadt, on the throne of France.  Austria would not even answer.

In July 1832 Joseph crossed to England, where he met Lucien, just arrived from Italy, bringing the news of the death of his nephew.  Disappointed, he stayed in England for some time, but returned to America in 1836.  In he finally left America, and again came to England, where he had a paralytic stroke, and in 1843 he went to Florence, where he met his wife after a long separation.

Joseph lived long enough to see the two attempts of another nephew, Louis Napoleon, at Strasburg in 1836, and at Boulogne in 1840, which seem to have been undertaken without his knowledge, and to have much surprised him.  He died in Florence in 1844; his body was buried first in Santa Croce, Florence, but was removed to the Invalides in 1864.  His wife the ex-Queen, had retired in 1815 to Frankfort and to Brussels, where she was well received by the King, William, and where she stayed till 1823, when she went to Florence, dying there in 1845.  Her monument is in the Cappella Riccardi, Santa Croce, Florence.