His popular nickname, Plon-Plon, stemmed from his difficulty in pronouncing his own name while still a child, although other notable historians and contemporary letters by his nephew Colonel Jérôme Bonaparte claim it was because he ran in cowardice during battle when the bombs fell.

He later served in a military capacity as general of a division in the Crimean War, as Governor of Algeria, and as a corps commander in the French Army of Italy in 1859.

As part of his cousin's policy of alliance with Piedmont-Sardinia, in 1859 Napoléon-Jérôme married Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy, daughter of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.

In his final will, Napoléon-Jérôme excluded Victor as his heir, declaring him "a traitor and a rebel", instead nominating his younger son Louis as his successor.

[1] Prince Napoléon-Jérôme, upon being banished from France by the 1886 law exiling heads of the nation's former ruling dynasties, settled at Prangins on the shores of Lake Geneva, in Vaud, Switzerland where, during the Second Empire, he had acquired a piece of property.