Napoleon and Marie Louise: The Emperor's Second Wife Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Napoleon and Marie Louise: The Emperor's Second Wife Book

Veteran British historian Alan Palmer offers another agreeable book blending biography and history in his account of the union between the upstart ruler of post-Revolutionary France and the daughter of Hapsburg Emperor Francis. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) married Archduchess Marie Louise (1791-1847) to obtain an heir and to cement an alliance with the Austrian dynasty he had been at war with since she was a child. At 16, Louise (as her family called her) wrote letters referring to Bonaparte as an "ogre," and when she realized in 1810 that she might be a candidate for the newly divorced Napoleon's hand, she wrote to her father, begging to be spared. But a Hapsburg princess was raised to believe that "a child's first duty is to obey its parents," and when Francis delegated Foreign Minister Metternich to explain why this marriage was essential to Austria's security, Marie Louise complied. Indeed, the lonely young woman was quite beguiled by her husband-to-be's shrewd and charming first letter, and she seems to have learned to love Napoleon, at least through the birth of their son in 1811 and until 1814, when he peremptorily ordered her to join him in exile on Elba. Then she turned against him and soon took up with a dashing Austrian officer, Count von Neipperg, with whom she had three children, though they could only marry (in secret) after Napoleon's death. In Palmer's frank but sympathetic assessment, sensual, self-centered Louise did her best to honor the obligations laid on her by diplomatic and dynastic necessity. Her life provides an instructive case study in the crisis of European royalty during the swings between revolution and reaction that shaped the turbulent 19th century. --Wendy SmithRead More

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  • Product Description

    "Archduchesses have always been disastrous for France," Napoleon once remarked. Yet in 1810 he married Archduchess Marie Louise, the eighteen-year-old daughter of his lifelong enemy, the Emperor of Austria.On January 5, 1810, she had read in the newspapers of the act of separation between Napoleon and his wife and wrote to her father, "I must admit, dear Papa, that I am very disturbed by this news."And to her friend Victoria de Poutet she wrote the next day, "I pity the unfortunate woman on whom his choice falls; that will certainly put an end to her fine days."Though their union was politically expedient, Napoleon lived happily and proudly with "my good Louise" until defeat sent him to Elba and she returned to Vienna, eventually becoming the sovereign of an Italian duchy.Alan Palmer gives the first detailed portrait of this extraordinary episode in Europe's history.He traces the changing fortunes of France and Austria through the years of Napoleonic ascendancy and eclipse.By using extracts from Louise's letters and travel diaries, he throws light on the conflicting worlds and torn loyalties which perplexed France's young, and often courageous, Empress.Personal touches are many and amusing, as in Louise's letters to her mother telling of their travels through sleet and rain and miles and miles of muddy roads.Overnight stops were made at wayside taverns ill-suited for families of distinction - one evening there was an insect hunt in an infested bedroom, with Louise claming that she had swatted the largest bug of all, whom she dubbed "Napoleon."Alan Palmer also examines the controversial years in which their son was raised to manhood in Vienna while Louise, with her secret second family, reigned in Parma as a benevolent Duchess, whose cultural legacy has survived into the 21st century.AUTHORBIO: Alan Palmer is an acclaimed historian, the author of several books including Napoleon in Russia, An Encyclopaedia of Napoleon's Europe, Twilight of the Habsburgs, Victory 1918, and biographies of Metternich, Tsar Alexander I and Bernadotte.

  • 0312280084
  • 9780312280086
  • Alan Palmer
  • 1 July 2001
  • St. Martin's Press
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 288
  • 1st. U.S.
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