His father was
Charles Louis, Hereditary Prince of Baden, the
heir to the
Margraviate of Baden, which was raised to a
grand duchy after the dissolution of the
Holy Roman Empire in 1806. His mother was
Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt, the daughter of
Louis IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt. He was the brother-in-law of the rulers of
Bavaria,
Russia, and
Sweden. His sister
Caroline was the
queen consort of
Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria, his sister
Louise was the
empress consort of
Alexander I of Russia and his sister
Frederica was the queen consort of
Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden. At the age of 15, Charles went on a journey to visit his sisters in their courts in St. Petersburg and Stockholm. He was on his way home with his father, when his father died in a fall from his coach on 15 December 1801. Charles was a witness to this accident. Due to the strong influence of France on the court of Baden, Charles was forced to marry
Emperor Napoléon I's adopted daughter,
Stéphanie de Beauharnais, in
Paris on 8 April 1806, this despite his own protests and those of his mother and sisters. Charles apparently preferred the hand of his cousin
Princess Augusta of Bavaria. It would be five years before the couple would produce an heir. Charles went to war in 1807 as head of the Baden contingent under
Marshal Lefebvre. There he took part in the
siege of Danzig. In 1808, Charles returned to the side of his grandfather. His grandfather's age was beginning to show and Charles became co-regent. Charles was 25 years old when he succeeded his grandfather
Charles Frederick upon the latter's death on 11 June 1811. On 4 October 1817, as neither he nor the other sons from his grandfather's first marriage had surviving male descendants, Charles confirmed the succession rights of his half-uncles from the Hochberg morganatic line, granting each the title, Prince and Margrave of Baden, and the style of
Highness. He asked the princely congress in
Aachen on 20 November 1818, just weeks before his death, to confirm the succession rights of the sons of
Louise Caroline, Countess of Hochberg, morganatic second wife of Grand Duke Charles Frederick. But this proclamation of Baden's succession evoked international challenges. The Congress of Vienna had, in 1815, recognised the eventual claims of Austria and Bavaria to parts of Baden which it allocated to Charles Frederick in the
Upper Palatinate and the
Breisgau, anticipating that upon his imminent demise those lands would cease to be part of the Grand Duchy. The disputes were resolved by the
Treaty of Frankfurt, 1819, under which Baden ceded a portion of
Wertheim, already enclaved within Bavaria, to that Kingdom, whereupon the succession as settled in 1817 was recognized by Bavaria and Austria. ==Events that occurred during his reign==