French financier, politician and wealthy entrepreneur who held interest in all but a few of the great commercial enterprises in Paris.
He was the extra-marital son of Hortense de Beauharnais (the wife of Louis Bonaparte and queen of Holland) and Charles Joseph, Comte de Flahaut, making him half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III and grandson of Talleyrand. It has been claimed that his Parisian birth certificate is fake and that he was instead born on 15–16 September 1811 in Switzerland.
Morny received a commission in the army, and he 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.
Back in France, 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. He resigned his portfolio after six months.
In 1856, Morny was sent as special envoy to the coronation of Alexander II of Russia and brought home a wife, Princess Sophie Troubetzkoi, who through her connections greatly strengthened his social position. Sophie was legally 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.
Morny played an important role in the development of the thoroughbred horse racing and breeding industry in France. The Prix Morny is named in his honour.
Charles de Morny died on 10 March 1865 in Paris at age 53.
Link to Wikipedia biography