In June 1784, a bursary allowed her to attend the Maison royale de Saint-Louis at Saint-Cyr, where she was frequently visited by her brother Napoleon.

Élisa set up home at 125 rue de Miromesnil, in the Quartier du Roule, where she held receptions and put on plays.

At the start of November 1800, Lucien was reassigned from his job as Minister of the Interior to Madrid as French ambassador to the court of the King of Spain.

Napoleon had contemptuously called Lucca the "dwarf republic", due to its small size in terms of territory, but despite this it was a bulwark of political, religious, and commercial independence.

Most of the power over Lucca and Piombino was exercised by Élisa, with Félix taking only a minor role and contenting himself with making military decisions.

Very active and concerned with administering the area, Élisa was surrounded at Lucca by ministers who largely remained in place right to the end of her reign.

On 5 May 1807, decreed the established of the "Committee for the Encouragement of Agriculture, Arts and Commerce" to encourage and finance the invention of new machines and new techniques to increase the territories' agricultural production and experimental plantations such as those of mulberries at Massa, where an École Normale de la Soie (Silk School) was created on 16 August 1808.

Élisa also set up many teaching establishments in Lucca and, in 1809, a "Direction Générale de l'Instruction Publique" (General Department of Public Education).

These works were hotly contested, especially in Lucca, where the expansion of the princely palaces necessitated the demolition of the Church of San Pietro in March 1807.

She also razed an entire block in Lucca to build a piazza in the French style in front of her city residence (now the seat of the province and the prefecture).

That block had included the Church of San Paolo with the venerated image of the Madonna dei miracoli[1] and so its demolition seriously affected the city's medieval architecture and almost sparked a revolt.

She also began road construction, notably the "route Friedland" to link Massa and Carrara, with work beginning on 15 August 1807 but becoming delayed and only completed in 1820.

On 21 March 1801, Lucien Bonaparte and the King of Spain signed the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, which restored Louisiana to France and in exchange established the Kingdom of Etruria by dividing Tuscany.

The new kingdom was initially put in the charge of the infante Maria Louisa and her husband, Louis of Etruria, but he soon proved to be a poor ruler and deceased soon after in 1803.

Élisa wished to become Governess of Tuscany in 1808, but she contracted an illness late in the year that prevented her from taking part in state affairs.

He normally disliked politically active women, and while he did appoint his second wife regent during his absence, that post was nominal only.

The observatory at that museum of physics and natural history was the ancestor of Florence's present-day Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri.

In response to this intransigence, Napoleon selected a general, Étienne Radet, to remove the pope and eliminate a figure that could rally opposition against the Empire and his regime.

In 1813, with Napoleon facing the allied coalition after his Russian campaign, Caroline Bonaparte's husband Joachim Murat, King of Naples, abandoned his brother-in-law and joined the Austrian cause by leading the Neapolitan to Rome, reaching Florence in January 1814.

The former duchess' requests were denied, but she was able to stay in Austria for a time thanks to the efforts of her brother, Jérôme Bonaparte, before moving to the Villa Caprara in Trieste.

Napoleon was exiled to Elba on 13 April 1814 under the Treaty of Fontainebleau, and Élisa was arrested on 25 March and interned in the Austrian fortress of Brünn.

Élisa acquired a country house at Villa Vicentina near Cervignano after her release and financed several archaeological digs in the region.