Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

• 1. Introduction

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  Marie Louise of Austria was born at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna on the 12th of December 1791, the eldest child of a man who would soon hold the titles of both Holy Roman Emperor and Emperor of Austria. She grew up speaking six languages, sheltered from men so strictly that even her pet rabbit was required to be female. As a girl, she called Napoleon Bonaparte "Krampus" and "the Anti-Christ" in letters to her governess. She wrote, when she heard he was looking for a wife: "I pity the poor princess whom he'll choose." That princess turned out to be her. How did a woman raised to despise France become Empress of the French? And what happened to her after the empire collapsed around her?

• 2. Raised to Hate France

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  Maria Carolina of Naples, Marie Antoinette's favourite sister, was Marie Louise's grandmother, and her influence ran deep. Maria Carolina had watched the French Revolution kill her sister on the guillotine, and her own Kingdom of Naples had been attacked by French forces. That hatred passed directly to her granddaughter. Marie Louise's French imperial governess, Victoire de Folliot de Crenneville, supervised her upbringing, yet the lessons she absorbed were ones of resentment rather than admiration.

  The War of the Third Coalition pushed Austria close to ruin, and in 1805 the Imperial family was forced to flee Vienna. Marie Louise took refuge in Hungary, then Galicia, before returning home in 1806. Her father, Emperor Francis, gave up the title of Holy Roman Emperor during that crisis, though he remained Emperor of Austria. These were not abstract political events for a girl in her early teens; they were the texture of daily life.

  When Marie Louise was fifteen, in 1807, her mother died following a miscarriage. Less than a year later, Emperor Francis married Maria Ludovika Beatrix of Austria-Este, who was only four years older than Marie Louise. The new stepmother was also embittered toward France, which had stripped her father of the Duchy of Modena, and she took on a genuine maternal role toward her stepdaughter. Another French defeat of Austria followed in 1809. The Imperial family fled Vienna again before the city surrendered on the 12th of May, travelling through bad weather and arriving in Buda, by their own account, "wet through, and nearly worn out with fatigue."

• 3. The Reluctant Empress

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  Napoleon had survived an assassination attempt in Vienna while negotiating the Treaty of Schönbrunn on the 12th of October 1809. He then turned his mind to dynastic strategy. He needed an heir, and he wanted the legitimacy that came from marrying into one of Europe's great royal houses. He began divorcing Joséphine de Beauharnais and first tried to secure the hand of Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, the youngest sister of Tsar Alexander I. Austria watched those negotiations with alarm, fearing encirclement by two allied great powers.

  It was Prince Metternich who suggested a different arrangement. Emperor Francis raised the idea of a marriage between Napoleon and Marie Louise through the Count of Narbonne, without making any formal overture. Marie Louise herself was kept uninformed of the discussions. Napoleon grew impatient with the Russians and abandoned that pursuit in late January 1810. He then negotiated directly with the Austrian ambassador, the Prince of Schwarzenberg, who signed the marriage contract on the 7th of February. Only then did Metternich inform Marie Louise.

  When asked for her consent, she gave a reply that has been quoted ever since: "I wish only what my duty commands me to wish." It was not enthusiasm. She had actually hoped at that point to marry Francis IV, Duke of Modena, the older brother of her stepmother. The proxy wedding took place on the 11th of March 1810 at the Augustinian Church in Vienna, with Napoleon represented by Archduke Charles, Marie Louise's own uncle.

• 4. Life at the French Court

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  Marie Louise departed Vienna on the 13th of March 1810, probably expecting never to return. Following the protocol Napoleon had ordered in imitation of Marie Antoinette's arrival four decades earlier, she passed through three small wooden rooms at the border: in the first she undressed, in the second she changed into clothes from the French imperial court and was received by Caroline Bonaparte, Queen of Naples, and in the third she became, ceremonially, French. When she finally met Napoleon in person, she told him: "You are much better-looking than your portrait."

  The civil wedding was held on the 1st of April 1810, and the religious ceremony the following day at the Salon Carré chapel in the Louvre, conducted by Cardinal Joseph Fesch, Napoleon's uncle and Grand Almoner of France. A bridal march was composed for the occasion by Ferdinando Paer, and a cantata by Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Celebrations continued through May and June, including a ball, a masque, a sea-battle staged on the Seine, and a fireworks display by Claude-Fortuné Ruggieri attended by four thousand people.

  Napoleon initially told an aide he had "married a womb," but the relationship developed. He claimed he preferred Marie Louise to Joséphine in one key respect: with his first wife there had been debts and rumoured affairs; with Marie Louise, in his own words, there was "Never a lie, never a debt." Marie Louise wrote to her father: "I assure you, dear papa, that people have done great injustice to the Emperor. The better one knows him, the better one appreciates and loves him." Yet tensions persisted. Napoleon complained to aides that Marie Louise was too shy compared to the outgoing Joséphine, with whom he stayed in close contact, which upset Marie Louise. She held the honorary presidency of the Société de Charité Maternelle, a charitable organisation Napoleon arranged for her, and she kept largely out of politics.

  On the 20th of March 1811, she gave birth to a son, Napoléon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte, who was immediately styled King of Rome. Napoleon said he would rather never have another child than see her suffer so much again in childbirth. Marie Louise had the boy brought to her every morning and visited him throughout the day.

• 5. War and the Fall of Empire

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  In May 1812, a month before the French invasion of Russia, Marie Louise accompanied Napoleon to Dresden. Her father told Napoleon he could count on Austria for the "triumph of the common cause." It was also in Dresden that Marie Louise first met Count Adam Albert von Neipperg, though neither could have guessed what role he would later play in her life. Napoleon left the city on the 29th of May to take charge of his army.

  The Russian campaign proved catastrophic. More than half of the Grande Armée was destroyed by the Russian winter and guerrilla attacks. After the failed Malet coup of October 1812, Napoleon raced back to France and reunited with Marie Louise on the night of the 18th of December. The following year brought the Sixth Coalition. On the 30th of March 1814, Marie Louise was appointed Regent as Napoleon left for battle, though the regency was largely nominal; real decisions remained with Napoleon and senior officials including Lebrun, Joseph Bonaparte, Talleyrand, and Savary. Her attempts to persuade her father to side with France failed. Austria joined the coalition against him.

  As Allied forces approached Paris, Marie Louise hesitated to leave. She believed her status as an Austrian archduchess would protect her, and she feared that fleeing would bolster the royalist cause. She was finally moved by a message relayed from Napoleon himself, who said he would rather know that she and the King of Rome were "at the bottom of the Seine" than in enemy hands. The court left Paris on the 29th of March. The Allies entered the city the following day. Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau on the 11th of April 1814. The resulting treaty exiled him to Elba and made Marie Louise ruler of the Duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla.

• 6. Neipperg and a New Life

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  In the summer of 1814, Emperor Francis sent Count Adam Albert von Neipperg to escort Marie Louise to the spa town of Aix-les-Bains. The official purpose was to prevent her from rejoining Napoleon on Elba. Neipperg was a confidant of Metternich and a known enemy of Napoleon. Marie Louise fell in love with him.

  Her grandmother Maria Carolina, who had shaped so much of her early thinking, disapproved of her abandoning her husband. Marie Louise wrote on the 9th of August 1814: "I am in a very unhappy and critical position; I must be very prudent in my conduct. There are moments when that thought so distracts me that I think that the best thing I could do would be to die." When Napoleon escaped from Elba in March 1815 and reclaimed power briefly, Marie Louise declined to support him. She passed a message to his private secretary, Claude-François de Méneval: "I hope 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." Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, exiled to Saint Helena from October 1815, and never again attempted to contact her personally.

  The Congress of Vienna confirmed Marie Louise as Duchess of Parma but barred her son from inheriting the duchy, a deliberate decision to prevent any Napoleonic dynasty taking root in Italy. After her death, Parma would revert to the Bourbons. Marie Louise departed for the duchy on the 7th of March 1816, accompanied by Neipperg. She entered Parma on the 18th of April and wrote to her father that the welcome moved her to tears. Napoleon died on the 5th of May 1821. Three months later, on the 8th of August, Marie Louise married Neipperg morganatically.

• 7. Ruling Parma

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  Neipperg served as Grand Chamberlain of Parma and received his governing instructions from Metternich, while Marie Louise largely left day-to-day administration to him. In December 1816 she had removed the incumbent Grand Chamberlain and installed Neipperg in the role. Together they had children, including Albertine, Countess of Montenuovo, and William Albert, later created Prince of Montenuovo.

  Neipperg died of heart problems on the 22nd of February 1829, devastating Marie Louise. Austria banned her from mourning him in public. Her son by Napoleon, known at the Austrian court as Franz and later given the title Duke of Reichstadt in 1818, grew resentful of both his Austrian relatives and his mother. When he discovered that Marie Louise had borne two children to Neipperg before their morganatic marriage, he reportedly said: "If Josephine had been my mother, my father would not have been buried at Saint Helena, and I should not be at Vienna. My mother is kind but weak; she was not the wife my father deserved; Josephine was." He died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-one in Vienna in 1832.

  In 1831, the Carbonari-led uprisings reached Parma. Protesters filled the streets to denounce Werklein, the Grand Chamberlain Austria had appointed to replace Neipperg. Marie Louise wanted to leave the city but was prevented by protesters who regarded her as sympathetic to their demands. She escaped between the 14th and the 15th of February, and a provisional government formed under Count Filippo Luigi Linati. She wrote to her father, who sent Austrian troops to crush the rebellion. Marie Louise granted amnesty to the dissidents on the 29th of September. In 1833, Metternich sent Charles-René de Bombelles, a French emigre who had fought against Napoleon in the Austrian army, to serve as Grand Chamberlain. He reformed the duchy's finances thoroughly. Six months after his arrival, on the 17th of February 1834, Marie Louise married him, again morganatically.

• 8. Death and Legacy

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  Marie Louise fell ill on the 9th of December 1847. Her condition worsened over the following days, and on the 17th of December she lost consciousness after vomiting and never woke again. She died that evening in Parma. The cause of death was pleurisy. Her body was taken back to Vienna and buried in the Imperial Crypt.

  She had outlived Napoleon by more than a quarter century, outlived two of her three husbands, and outlived the son she bore Napoleon. The arms she used as Duchess of Parma survive in an unexpected place: the perfume company Acqua di Parma uses them as its logo, a tribute to the role she played in developing Parma's perfume and glass industries.