The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise. Imbert de Saint-Amand

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СКАЧАТЬ the completion of the sacrifice approached. The victim did not pray that the cup might pass from his lips. He ceased to struggle against the inevitable, and submitted to his fate, becoming as gentle and peaceful as a child. As the earth left him, he turned to heaven. "I understood and felt," said Count Prokesch-Osten, "all the sublimity there is in religion, which alone could throw a light on this man's path, through the uncertainty and darkness that surrounded him. … Religion is our staff. We can find no surer support in our journey through the darkness of our life on earth." He had received from the Emperor and Empress of Austria a book of prayers, called Divine Harmonies, which he read over and over on his bed of suffering. It contained these words written by his grandfather's hand: "In every incident of your life, in every struggle of your soul, may God aid you with His light and strength; this is the most ardent wish of your loving grandparents." "This book is very dear to me," the prince said to his friend, after a serious talk on religious matters; "those words, written by relatives whom I sincerely respect and thoroughly love, have an inestimable value for me, and yet I give it to you. I want what I most value to go to you, in memory of what seems to me the most important of our conversations."

      When he was dying, he wanted to gaze at the crucifix, in order not to complain of his sad lot, dying thus at the very threshold of a career which promised to be brilliant and glorious; to go down so early to the gloomy tomb of the Hapsburgs! To exchange his glowing visions for this untimely end; to find an Austrian tomb instead of the throne of France! He accepted his fate, but he wished as few witnesses as possible of his last sufferings. He did not want to show to the world a son of Napoleon so weak and broken. He could scarcely lift the weak, worn hand which should have wielded Charlemagne's sword and sceptre. "I am so weak," he said; "I beg of you not to let any one see me in my misery!" His sumptuous cradle he had given to the Imperial Treasury of Vienna, which is near the Church of the Capuchins, where he was to be buried. "My cradle and my grave will be near each other," he said. "My birth and my death—that's my whole story." In the overthrow, by lightning, of one of the eagles surmounting the palace of Schoenbrunn, the populace saw a prophecy of the death there of Napoleon's son, and in fact it was there that he died, in the room which his father had occupied in 1809, when possibly for the first time he thought of this Austrian marriage, which should—such at least was his dream—guarantee to the Napoleonic dynasty unlimited power and glory. The prince desired only one thing—to see his mother. She came, and he greeted her with tenderness. He had also near him his young and beautiful relative, the Archduchess Sophia, the mother of the present Emperor of Austria. This charming princess, who was very fond of the young man who was approaching his end, told him that the time had come for him to receive the last sacraments. "We will pray together," she said; "I will pray for you, and you shall pray for me and for my unborn child." The prince, consoled and strengthened by the aid of religion, died in the enjoyment of a firm faith and thorough piety. "Mother, mother!" were his last words. General Hartmann said: "Having passed my life on battle-fields, I have often seen death, but I never saw a soldier die more bravely." The 22d of July was a very momentous date in the career of this young prince. It was July 22, 1818, that the title of Duke of Reichstadt was substituted for his name of Napoleon Bonaparte; July 22, 1821, he heard of his father's death; and July 22, 1832, he died at the age of twenty-one years four months and two days.

      We desire to make five studies of the second wife and the son of Napoleon I. The first, which we are now beginning, covers a period of brilliancy of infatuation, of fairy-like splendor, which in all its glow forms a striking contrast with the dreadful shadows that follow. With the aid of eye-witnesses whose memoirs abound with most valuable recollections—such as Prince Metternich, who had the principal charge of the Archduchess's marriage; M. de Bausset and General de Ségur, both attached to the Emperor Napoleon's household, so that they saw him nearly every day; Madame Durand, the Empress's first lady-in-waiting; Baron de Méneval, his private secretary—with their aid we shall try to recall the brilliant past, taking for our motto that phrase of Michelet: "History is a resurrection." An excellent work, which deserves translation, Von Helfert's Marie Louise, Empress of the French, throws a great deal of light on the early years of the mother of the King of Rome. In the archives of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs—thanks to the intelligent and liberal control which facilitates historic research—we have found a great number of curious documents which had never been published, such as letters written to Napoleon by the Emperor and Empress of Austria, and despatches from his ambassador at Vienna, Count Otto. This first study will carry us to the beginning of the Russian campaign, that glorious period when the unheard-of prosperity promised to be eternal. No darker night was ever preceded by a more brilliant sun. Napoleon said on the rock of Saint Helena: "Marie Louise had a short reign; but she must have enjoyed it; the world was at her feet."

I.

       Table of Contents

      EARLY YEARS.

      Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria, Empress of the French, Queen of

       Italy, afterwards Duchess of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla, was born

       in Vienna, December 12, 1791, the daughter of Archduke Francis, Prince

       Imperial, who a year later became Emperor of Germany under the name of

       Francis II., and of Marie Thérèse, Princess of Naples, daughter of King

       Ferdinand IV. and Queen Marie Caroline.

      Marie Louise's father was born February 12, 1768, a year and a half earlier than the Emperor Napoleon. He was the grandson of the great Empress Marie Thérèse, and son of the Emperor Leopold II., who was the brother of the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and whom he succeeded March 1, 1792; his mother was a Spanish princess, a daughter of Charles III. of Spain. He had four wives. He was an excellent husband, but his family affections were so strong that he could not remain a widower. In 1788 he married his first wife, Princess Elizabeth Wilhelmina Louisa of Wurtemberg, who died February 17, 1790, in giving birth to a daughter who lived but six months. The same year he married by proxy at Naples, August 15, and September 19 in person at Vienna, the young Neapolitan princess Marie Thérèse, daughter of Ferdinand IV. and of Marie Caroline, who ruled over the Two Sicilies.

      The young princess, who was born June 6, 1772, was then eighteen years old. She was kind, virtuous, and well educated, and her influence at the court of Vienna was most excellent. Her mother, who during her reign of thirty-six years endured many trials and exhibited great qualities as well as great faults, was a remarkable woman.

      Marie Caroline, the Queen of Naples, was energetic to excess, courageous to the point of heroism; she believed that severity and sometimes even cruelty was demanded of a sovereign; her religion amounted to superstition, her love of authority to despotism; she alternated between passionate devotion to pleasure and earnest zeal for her duty; she was ardent in her affections and implacable in resentment, intense in her joys and in her sorrows; she was often an unwise queen, but as a mother she was beyond reproach. Like the matrons of antiquity and her illustrious mother, the Empress Marie Thérèse, she was proud of her large family; she had no fewer than seventeen children, and political cares never prevented her actively and intelligently caring for their moral and physical welfare. If she had not the happiness of seeing them all grow up, those who survived were yet the constant object of her tender solicitude. She took a prominent part in the education of her two sons, the Duke of Calabria and the Prince of Salerno, and still more in that of her five daughters: Marie Thérèse, the wife of the Emperor Francis II.; Marie Louise, who married the Archduke Ferdinand, Grand Duke of Tuscany; Marie Christine, wife of Charles Felix, Duke of Genoa, later King of Sardinia; Marie Amélie, Duchess of Orleans, then Queen of France; Marie Antoinette, first wife of the Prince of Asturias, later Ferdinand VII., King of Spain.

      Marie Caroline was very fond of her eldest daughter, Marie Thérèse; and when the princess had, in 1790, married СКАЧАТЬ