The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise

by Imbert de Saint-Amand

When Napoleon returned from Elba, the situation of Marie Louise, so far from improving, became only more difficult. She had no illusions about the fate that awaited her audacious husband, who was unable to contend, single-handed, against all Europe. She knew better than any one, not only that he had nothing to hope from the Emperor of Austria, his father-in-law, but that in this sovereign he would find a bitter, implacable foe. As to the Emperor Alexander, he swore that he would sacrifice his last ruble, his last soldier, before he would consent to let Napoleon reign in France. Marie Louise knew too well the feeling that animated the Congress at Vienna, to imagine that her husband had the slightest chance of success. She was convinced that by returning from Elba, he was only preparing for France a new invasion, and for himself chains. Since she was a prisoner of the Coalition, she was condemned to widowhood, even in the lifetime of her husband. She cannot then be blamed for remaining at Vienna, whence escape was absolutely impossible.

Marie Louise committed one great error; that, namely, of writing that inasmuch as she was entirely without part in the plans of the Emperor Napoleon, she placed herself under the protection of the Allies,—Allies who at that very moment were urging the assassination of her husband, in the famous declaration of March 13, 1815, in which they said: "By breaking the convention, which established him on the island of Elba, Bonaparte has destroyed the only legal title on which his existence depended. By reappearing in France, with plans of disturbance and turmoil, he has, by his own act, forfeited the protection of the laws, and has shown to the world that there can be no peace or truce with him as a party. The Powers consequently declare that Napoleon Bonaparte has placed himself outside of all civil and social relations, and that as an enemy and disturber of the world's peace, he exposes himself to public vengeance." April 16, at the moment when the processions designed to pray for the success of the Austrian armies, were going through the streets of Vienna to visit the Cathedral and the principal churches, the Empress of Austria dared to ask the former Empress of the French to accompany the processions with the rest of the court; but Marie Louise rejected the insulting proposal. The 6th of May next, when M. de Méneval, who was about to return to France, came to bid farewell and to receive her commands, she spoke to this effect to the faithful subject who was soon to see Napoleon: "I am aware that all relations between me and France are coming to an end, but I shall always cherish the memory of my adopted home…. Convince the Emperor of all the good I wish him. I hope that he will understand the misery of my position…. I shall never assent to a divorce, but I flatter myself that he will not oppose an amicable separation, and that he will not bear any ill feeling towards me…. This separation has become imperative; it will in no way affect the feelings of esteem and gratitude that I preserve." Then she gave to M. de Méneval a gold snuff-box, bearing his initials in diamonds, as a memento, and left him, to hide the emotion by which she was overcome. Her emotion was not very deep, and her tears soon dried. In 1814 she had met the man who was to make her forget her duty towards her illustrious husband. He was twenty years older than she, and always wore a large black band to hide the scar of a wound by which he had lost an eye. As diplomatist and as a soldier he had been one of the most persistent and one of the most skilful of Napoleon's enemies. General the Count of Neipperg, as he called himself, had been especially active in persuading two Frenchmen, Bernadotte and Murat, to take up arms against France. Since 1814 he had been most devoted to Marie Louise, and he felt or pretended to feel for her an affection on which she did not fear to smile. She admitted him to her table; he became her chamberlain, her advocate at the Congress of Vienna, her prime minister in the Duchy of Parma, and after Napoleon's death, her morganatic husband. He had three children by her,—two daughters (one of whom died young; the other married the son of the Count San Vitale, Grand Chamberlain of Parma) and one son (who took the title of Count of Montenuovo and served in the Austrian army). Until his death in 1829 the Count of Neipperg completely controlled Marie Louise, as Napoleon had never done.

After Waterloo, every day dimmed Marie Louise's recollections of France. The four years of her reign—two spent in the splendor of perpetual adoration, two in the gloom of disasters culminating in final ruin—were like a distant dream, half a golden vision, half a hideous nightmare. It was all but a brief episode in her life. She thoroughly deserved the name of "the Austrian," which had been given unjustly to Marie Antoinette; for Marie Antoinette really became a Frenchwoman. The Duchess of Parma—for that was the title of the woman who had worn the two crowns of France and of Italy—lived more in her principality than in Vienna, more interested in the Count of Neipperg than in the Duke of Reichstadt. While her son never left the Emperor Francis, she reigned in her little duchy. But the title was to expire at her death; for the Coalition had feared to permit a son of Napoleon to have an hereditary claim to rule over Parma. Yet Marie Louise cannot properly be called a bad mother. She went to close the eyes of her son, who died in his twenty-second year, of consumption and disappointment.

By this event was broken the last bond which attached Napoleon's widow to the imperial traditions. In 1833 she was married, for the third time, to a Frenchman, the son of an émigré in the Austrian service. He was a M. de Bombelles, whose mother had been a Miss Mackan, an intimate friend of Madame Elisabeth, and had married the Count of Bombelles, ambassador of Louis XVI. in Portugal, and later in Venice, who took orders after his wife's death and became Bishop of Amiens under the Restoration. Marie Louise, who died December 17, 1847, aged fifty-six, lived in surroundings directly hostile to Napoleon's glory. Her ideas in her last years grew to resemble those of her childhood, and she was perpetually denouncing the principles of the French Revolution and of the liberalism which pursued her even in the Duchy of Parma. France has reproached her with abandoning Napoleon, and still more perhaps for having given two obscure successors to the most famous man of modern times.

If Marie Louise is not a very sympathetic figure, no story is more touching and more melancholy than that of her son's life and death. It is a tale of hope deceived by reality; of youth and beauty cut down in their flower; of the innocent paying for the guilty; of the victim marked by fate as the expiation for others. One might say that he came into the world only to give a lasting example of the instability of human greatness. When he was at the point of death, worn out with suffering, he said sadly, "My birth and my death comprise my whole history." But this short story is perhaps richer in instruction than the longest reigns. The Emperor's son will be known for many ages by his three titles,—the King of Rome, Napoleon II., and the Duke of Reichstadt. He had already inspired great poets, and given to philosophers and Christians occasion for profound thoughts. His memory is indissolubly bound up with that of his father, and posterity will never forget him. Even those who are most virulent against Napoleon's memory, feel their wrath melt when they think of his son; and when at the Church of the Capuchins, in Vienna, a monk lights with a flickering torch the dark tomb of the great captain's son, who lies by the side of his grandfather, Francis II., who was at once his protector and his jailer, deep thoughts arise as one considers the vanity of political calculations, the emptiness of glory, of power, and of genius.

Poor boy! His birth was greeted with countless thanksgivings, celebrations, and joyous applause. Paris was beside itself when in the morning of March 20, 1811, there sounded the twenty-second report of a cannon, announcing that the Emperor had, not a daughter, but a son. He lay in a costly cradle of mother-of-pearl and gold, surmounted by a winged Victory which seemed to protect the slumbers of the King of Rome. The Imperial heir in his gilded baby-carriage drawn by two snow-white sheep beneath the trees at Saint Cloud was a charming object. He was but a year old when Gérard painted him in his cradle, playing with a cup and ball, as if the cup were a sceptre and the ball were the world, with which his childish hands were playing. When on the eve of the battle of Moskowa, Napoleon was giving his final orders for the tremendous struggle of the next day, a courier, M. de Bausset, arrived suddenly from Paris, bringing with him this masterpiece of Gérard's; at once the General forgot his anxieties in his paternal joy. "Gentlemen," said Napoleon to his officers, "if my son were fifteen years old, you may be sure that he would be here among this multitude of brave men, and not merely in a picture." Then he had the portrait of the King of Rome set out in front of his tent, on a chair, that the sight of it might be an added excitement to victory. And the old grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, the veterans with their grizzly moustaches,—the men who were never to abandon their Emperor, who followed him to Elba, and died at Waterloo,—heroes, as kind as they were brave, actually cried with joy as they gazed at the portrait of this boy whose glorious future they hoped to make sure by their brave deeds.

But what a sad future it was! Within less than two years Cossacks were the escort of the King of Rome. When the Coalition made him a prisoner, he was forever torn from his father. Napoleon, March 20, 1815, on this return from Elba, re-entered triumphantly the Palace of the Tuileries as if by miracle, but his joy was incomplete. March 20 was his son's birthday, the day he was four years old, and the boy was not there; his father never saw him again. At Vienna the little prince seemed the victim of an untimely gloom; he missed his young playmates. "Any one can see that I am not a king," he said; "I haven't any pages now."

The King of Rome had lost the childish merriment and the talkativeness which had made him very captivating. So far from growing familiar with those among whom he was thrown, he seemed rather to be suspicious and distrustful of them. During the Hundred Days the private secretary of Marie Louise left her at Vienna to return to Napoleon in France. "Have you any message for your father?" he asked of the little prince. The boy thought for a moment, and then, as if he were watched, led the faithful officer up to the window and whispered to him, very low, "You will tell him that I always love him dearly."

In spite of the many miles that separated them, the son was to be a consolation to his father. In 1816 the prisoner at Saint Helena received a lock of the young prince's hair, and a letter which he had written with his hand held by some one else. Napoleon was filled with joy, and forgot his chains. It was a renewal of the happiness he had felt on the eve of Moskowa, when he had received the portrait of the son he loved so warmly. Once again he summoned those who were about him and, deeply moved, showed to them the lock of hair and the letter of his child.

For his part, the boy did not forget his father. In vain they gave him a German title and a German name, and removed the Imperial arms with their eagle; in vain they expunged the Napoleon from his name,—Napoleon, which was an object of terror to the enemies of France. His Highness, Prince Francis Charles Joseph, Duke of Reichstadt, knew very well that his title was the King of Rome and Napoleon II. He knew that in his veins there flowed the blood of the greatest warrior of modern times. He had scarcely left the cradle when he began to show military tastes. When only five, he said to Hummel, the artist, who was painting his portrait: "I want to be a soldier. I shall fight well. I shall be in the charge." "But," urged the artist, "you will find the bayonets of the grenadiers in your way, and they will kill you perhaps." And the boy answered, "But shan't I have a sword to beat down the bayonets?" Before he was seven he wore a uniform. He learned eagerly the manual of arms; and when he was rewarded by promotion to the grade of sergeant, he was as proud of his stripes as he would have been of a throne. His father's career continually occupied his thoughts and filled his imagination with a sort of ecstasy.