Morny was born in
Switzerland, and was the extra-marital son of
Hortense de Beauharnais (the wife of
Louis Bonaparte and
queen of Holland) and
Charles, Comte de Flahaut, making him half-brother of Emperor
Napoleon III and grandson of
Empress Joséphine and
Talleyrand. His birth was duly registered in a misleading certificate, which made him the legitimate son of Auguste Jean Hyacinthe Demorny, and born in Paris on 23 October 1811, and described as a landowner of
Saint-Domingue. M. Demorny was in fact an officer in the Prussian army and a native of the French colony of St. Domingue (now
Haiti), though he owned no land there or elsewhere. Morny was educated by his grandmother,
Adelaïde Filleul. After a brilliant school and college career the future duc de Morny received a commission in the army, and the next year he entered the staff college. The comte de Morny, as he was called by a polite fiction, served in
Algeria in 1834–1835 (during the
French conquest of Algeria) as aide-de-camp to General
Camille Alphonse Trezel, whose life he saved under the walls of
Constantine. When Morny returned to Paris in 1838, he secured a solid position in the business world by establishing a major
beet-sugar industry at
Clermont-Ferrand in the
Auvergne and by writing a pamphlet
Sur la question des sucres in 1838. In these and other lucrative speculations he was helped by his mistress
Françoise Mosselman, the beautiful and wealthy wife of the Belgian
ambassador,
Charles Aimé Joseph Le Hon, Comte Le Hon. Eventually there were few great commercial enterprises in Paris in which he did not have an interest. Although Morny sat as deputy for Clermont-Ferrand from 1842 onwards, he took at first no important part in party politics, but he was heard with respect on industrial and financial questions. He supported
the government of
Louis Philippe, because revolution threatened his commercial interests, but before the
Revolutions of 1848, by which he was temporarily ruined, he considered converting to the Bourbon legitimist cause represented by the
Comte de Chambord. His attitude was expressed by the witticism with which he is said to have replied to a lady who asked what he would do if the Chamber were "swept out." "Range myself on the side of the broom handle," was his answer. Presently he was admitted to the intimate circle of his half-brother Louis Napoleon, and he helped to engineer the ''
coup d'état'' of
2 December 1851 on the morrow of which he was appointed to head the
ministry of the interior. After six months in office, during which Morny showed his political opponents moderation and tact, he resigned his portfolio, ostensibly because he disapproved of the confiscation of the Bourbon-Orléans property but really because Napoleon, influenced by Morny's rivals, resented his claim to a foremost place in the government as a close relative of the
House of Bonaparte. He then resumed his financial speculations. When in 1854 the Emperor appointed him president of the
Corps Législatif, a position which he filled for the rest of his life, he used his official rank to assist his schemes. In 1856, Morny was sent as special envoy to the coronation of Tsar
Alexander II of Russia and brought home a wife, Princess
Sophie Troubetzkoi, who through her connections greatly strengthened his social position. Sophie was legally the daughter of Prince Sergey Vasilyevich Trubetskoy, but may have been the illegitimate daughter of
Nicholas I of Russia. In 1862, Morny was created a Duke. It is said that he aspired to the
throne of Mexico, and that the French expedition sent to place
Archduke Maximilian of Austria on the throne was prompted by Napoleon III's desire to thwart this ambition. , Paris In spite of occasional disagreements, Morny's influence with the emperor remained great, and the liberal policies which he advocated enabled him to serve the imperial cause through his influence with the leaders of the opposition, the most conspicuous of whom,
Émile Ollivier, was detached from his colleagues by Morny's efforts. But while he was laying the foundations of the "Liberal Empire" his health deteriorated and was further injured by
quack medicines. The emperor and the empress visited him just before his death in Paris on 10 March 1865. Morny's valuable painting collection, including
Jean-Honoré Fragonard's
The Swing, was sold after his death. In spite of his undoubted wit and social gifts, Morny failed to secure the distinction he desired as a dramatist, and none of his pieces, which appeared under the pseudonym of M. de St Rémy, including
Sur la grande route,
M. Choufleuri restera chez lui le . . ., and the
Les finesses du mari, among others, met with success on the stage. M. de Chenneviėres, the director of the Beaux-Arts, admired Morny's taste in pictures as well as the man himself. Charles de Morny was, he opined, "the most perfectly polite, the most elegant, the best bred man of his time". ==Thoroughbred horse racing==