Marie Louise, Part III

Marie Louise seemed attached to her husband and spoke well of him to her father… and he seemed very fond of her.  It’s rumoured that he still had occasional mistresses... but he was getting older and he had over extended his Empire.  His invasion of Russia was of course a great mistake, which resulted in military disaster.  In Spain, Wellington was gradually winning the war with Napoleon’s marshals.

Napoleon arranged for Josephine to “accidentally” meet his son when out with the child’s nurse, one day.  She was delighted to see the baby. 
But by then, the end of the Empire was getting closer.  Napoleon invaded Russia and was forced to retreat, losing a large part of his army.  In his weakened position, he was then attacked by Prussia, Russia and Great Britain and Austria joined in the war, against him.  Marie Louise was appointed Regent but it was a nominal position.  When the Allied army was on the verge of entering Paris, she wanted to stay there with her son but Napoleon wanted her to flee from his enemies. Napoleon abdicated in April, 1814, and Marie Louise was given several Italian Duchies, which were to be inherited by her son.

Initially she wanted to re-join her husband but was dissuaded by her Austrian advisers.  She returned to Vienna, divided between wishing to support her husband who was the father of her child, and doing what the Austrians wanted. Napoleon, exiled to Elba, hoped for a visit from her, but by the summer of 1814, she had fallen in love with Adam Von Neipperg, a middle aged married soldier.  It was hoped that he would distract Marie Louise from wanting to visit her husband.  She was soon involved in an affair with Neipperg and asked for an amicable separation from Napoleon.  In 1816, she went to Parma, to live in her Duchy there. Neipperg accompanied her, but she had to leave her son behind, and he was cut out from the succession to the Duchy.

Neipperg was the virtual ruler of Parma, as Marie Louise left public affairs to him.  She was sorry to leave her son but seems to have accepted it.  Soon she had children by Neipperg whose wife had died and was preoccupied with them. 
However she had to wait till Napoleon’s death in 1821 to be able to marry her lover, morganatically.

She had 3 children with him, a daughter who died young, and another daughter and son who survived her.  She was preoccupied with private life and left her husband to run the Duchy, under instructions from the Austrian chief minister. 

The King of Rome, now known by the German name of Franz and titled the Duke of Reichstatdt grew up at the Austrian court and grew alienated from his mother.  He felt that she had abandoned him and his father…and he spoke well of Josephine believing that she would have been a more loyal wife.

Marie Louise has been criticised by Bonapartists for her leaving Napoleon and letting her son by him grow up in Austria... and the way she rapidly fell in love with a married man and became his mistress.

However, she had not wished to marry Napoleon, and had tried to be loyal to him, up to a point... But while she had been fond of him, once he was banished from Europe, she regarded their relationship as at an end…It had been a political alliance... rather than any kind of love match.

In 1829 Neipperg died and she was devastated.  She was grieved at the death of her eldest son, who died young of TB.  In the early 1830s, another Austrian courtier was sent to Parma, Charles-René de Bombelles, and within 6 months, Louise married him morganatically.  He proved a loyal husband and remained close to her until her death in 1847, when she was taken ill and died of pleurisy.  She was later buried in Austria.  Her children married into the Austrian nobility….

Napoleon had been hurt by her indifference and even more so by the separation from his son and the fact that the boy was going to be brought up as an Austrian prince.  He did however speak kindly of his second wife and said that he had respected her much more than he did Josephine.  Josephine had been unfaithful and insanely extravagant and their marriage had had its storms in the earlier days… whereas Marie Louise had been a loyal wife while they were together and had always been careful with money. 

However Josephine had grown to genuinely love him, though at the beginning of her marriage, she had not cared deeply for him.  After his downfall, she had tried to use her position and her personal charm and magnetism to help him, as well as to help her son and daughter and their children.  She had remained loyal to Napoleon in spite of receiving the Russian Tsar… who had protected Hortense.

Marie Louise had grown fond of her husband and learned to get on with him, and had been grateful for his kindness.  However it had been a political marriage and she is probably not to be blamed for not wanting to remain married to him in any real sense, when he was no longer Emperor…but she does come across as a rather shallow woman, who was very much led by others.