310. Marie Antoinette Joséphine Jeanne. Queen of France.
[Born at Vienna, 1755. Guillotined 1793. Aged 38.]
The unfortunate daughter of Francis I., Emperor of Germany, and the illustrious Maria Theresa of Austria. In 1770, before she was sixteen, married to Louis the Dauphin, who in 1774 became King of France, under the title of Louis XVI. At the breaking out of the French Revolution, every public disaster was laid to her charge by the maddened people, and after the execution of her husband, she was herself condemned to death. On her way to the scaffold, she was for two hours reviled by a ferocious mob; but resignation and sweetness of demeanour only could be traced on her countenance. Her hair had been turned silvery white by her many troubles, and a settled melancholy was stamped on her beautiful features. After her execution, her body was immediately consumed with quick lime. The murder of this unhappy lady was the most crimson spot in all the bloody time of the French Revolution. She was of a playful, happy, cheerful disposition, devoted to her family, benevolent to all. Her purity is beyond question, her heroism perfect. In mixing in public concerns, which she did not understand, she betrayed imprudence. In despising etiquette she laid herself open to the worst criticisms of her ungenerous foes; but her character shines unsullied after cruel persecution, horrible imprisonment, and ignominious death.
[From the marble in the Louvre by Lecomte.]
311. Napoleon Buonaparte. Emperor of France.
[Born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, 1768. Died at St. Helena, 1821. Aged 53.]
A soldier of fortune at the outset of his career. Lieutenant of Artillery, 1785. First Consul of France, 1799. Emperor of France in 1804, when he was but 36 years of age. Discrowned exile, and prisoner, 1815. The military prodigy of his age. His story reads like a romance of eastern enchantment; for he made and unmade kings at his will, and confounding all the established conceptions and expectations of men, asserted and won his right to fix for a time the destinies of nations. His extreme hour of greatness was in 1813, after the fearful retreat from Russia, when in a few months he summoned a new army to his side from the fields of exhausted France, and alone defied, and almost overcame, the united strength of the rest of civilized Europe. The most ignoble period of his life is found on the barren rock of St. Helena, when, treacherous to his former grandeur, he was afflicted and absorbed by the worthless and passing annoyances of the moment. His career was that of a dazzling meteor, astonishing all men in its fiery passage, but creating little else than amazement, and admiration mingled with fear. Not naturally cruel, he enacted cruelties. Brave in the field, he lacked the true heroic element. He used all men for his own advancement, and counted human life valueless, when its sacrifice might add to his imagined glory. Superstitious, but not religious. Framed for intensest exertion, indefatigable, impatient, irritable, untruthful, theatrical, petty. Yet a grand lawgiver; cognisant of the wants of men, and capable of meeting them, had his lust of ambition suffered him to provide for the interests of his people as sedulously as for his own. His character, a singular conflict of great virtues with small vices, and of great vices with small virtues. The most splendid soldier since the days of Julius Cæsar, and the idol of his army. The uncle of Napoleon III., the present Emperor of France.
[From the marble in the Louvre by Houdon.]
311A. Napoleon Buonaparte. Emperor of France.
[The colossal bust by Canova.]