Many who read the banns of marriage were probably surprised at finding that neither in that document nor in other official papers does Prince Napoleon use the historic name of “Bonaparte.” I may, therefore, explain that under the Second Empire it was decreed by a Family Statute that henceforward “Napoleon” should be the designation of those branches of the Imperial Family who might be called upon to reign. The other members of the family preserved the name of “Bonaparte,” but constituted the “civil” family of the Emperor Napoleon III., and were not included in the “Imperial” Family. This distinction is noted in the “Almanach de Gotha” without explanation—an omission which should be rectified in future editions of the world’s libro d’oro.[174]
In the Times of November 26, 1909, it was noted that “Prince Victor Napoleon Bonaparte, after a week’s stay at the Savoy Hotel, left yesterday for Brussels.”
Our official Court Circular of the same date described the Pretender as “His Imperial Highness Prince Napoleon Bonaparte.”
Both those designations are incorrect. Upon the death of his father (1891), Victor, as eldest son, became “Prince Napoleon”; and it will be observed that in the original banns of marriage he is so styled, plus his Christian names, “Victor Gerome [correctly “Jérôme”] Frederick.”
For the solemnization of these princely imperial and royal nuptials on November 14, 1910, the old château of Moncalieri shook off the dust of centuries; the chevaliers, in their suits of mail, who sleep their last long sleep under the tombstones; the more modern heroes, whose great deeds are narrated in the war-pictures adorning the immense and melancholy corridors—all these reawoke for some days. Momentarily they saw once more the venerable citadel, perched, like a great eagle’s nest, on the flank of the picturesque hills leaning over the River Po, a few miles from Turin, in which, for so many lustres, Princesse Clotilde has unrolled the autumnal stages of her saintly existence, divided between penance and charity. At the jubilant strains of the “Alléluia” the old home of the Princes of Piedmont, which resembles a fortress charged to watch over the mausoleum of the Superga,[175] saw itself resuscitated.
After these rapid souvenirs we ascend the slopes of the park, arrest our steps on the terrace to admire the magnificent panorama of the immense valley of the Po; then enter this moyen-âge château, with its interminable galleries and great salles, ordinarily so solitary and indescribably sombre, but to-day rejuvenated, made comfortable, bedecked with sumptuous stuffs, with carpets and with flowers, luxuriously furnished by royal command—by the orders of the King of Italy. And it is the Administration of the Royal Domains which has sent to Moncalieri the beautiful services of plate for the wedding repast—something between a State déjeuner and a State banquet. King Victor Emmanuel III. had indeed, with kindly and generous tyranny, decreed that, although celebrated with the strictest princely privacy, there should be lacking no noble and dignified elements in the solemnization of the marriage of his cousin-german—great-nephew of Napoleon I., Emperor of the French, King of Italy—and Princesse Clémentine of Belgium, daughter and granddaughter of two great monarchs, and great-granddaughter of Louis Philippe I., King of the French.
If Prince Napoleon was married at his mother’s residence, and in the midst of his nearest relatives, it was far otherwise with Princesse Clémentine, who, for political reasons, had to make a long journey to obtain the fulfilment of a happiness which she had so long awaited. She had, however, even before the marriage, been received in Italy, not only as a Princess, but as a relative. The daughter of Queen Henrietta, Archduchess of Austria, the Princesse is, in fact, distantly related to the Italian royal family, and, previous to her alliance with Prince Napoleon, “dispensations” had to be obtained from Rome.
By yet another delicate attention of the King of Italy, Princesse Clémentine and her aunt, the widowed Comtesse de Flandre, mother of the King of the Belgians, who accompanied her to the altar, were not obliged, before the wedding, to face the ennui—in such circumstances—inseparable from the occupation of apartments at an hotel. The left wing of the Royal Palace at Turin was, for the special gratification of these two royal ladies, decorated as it is on great fête-days; and it was through a forest of chrysanthemums, adorning even the portraits of their ancestors, that they entered the old palace of the Kings of Sardinia. The Dowager Duchesse d’Aoste (Princesse Lætitia) presided, with her wonted taste and grace, over the installation of the apartments reserved for the two Princesses and their suite; and it was Princesse Lætitia who, earlier in the year, had chaperoned the fiancée on her first visit to her future mother-in-law at Moncalieri, the scene of the fiançailles.
H.I.H. Prince Napoleon arrived at the château of Moncalieri three days before the wedding, attended by M. Thouvenel, the senior member of the Prince’s service d’honneur, and by the Marquis de Girardin (who had accompanied the Prince from Brussels). The other members of the suite were lodged at Turin. Princesse Lætitia and her son and General Prince Louis Napoleon stayed at the château of Moncalieri.
At half-past ten on the morning of the wedding the Princes, Princesses, and their suites assembled in the large salon des Suisses, in which the Mayor of Moncalieri (M. Protti) celebrated the civil marriage of the imperial and royal couple. The witnesses at this function were the Comte de Salemi (son of H.I.H. Princesse Lætitia), the Marquis Ferreri di Cambiano (Deputy for Moncalieri), Comte Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, and Comte Negri di Lamporo, the two latter being selected as residing at Moncalieri (the Italian law requiring that two of the witnesses at the civil union are residents of the place of the marriage). After the brief ceremony, the Mayor expressed his hopes that the future of the imperial couple would be of the happiest; then, on behalf of the Municipality of Moncalieri, he gave Prince Napoleon the gold pen with which the act of marriage had been signed; and to the Princesse the Mayor presented a bouquet of orchids. The procès-verbal of the civil marriage was afterwards registered at the French Consulate at Turin.