The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise

The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise [with accents]

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Title: The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise
Author: Imbert De Saint-Amand
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8575] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 25, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE ***

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THE HAPPY DAYS
OF
THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE
BY
IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND
TRANSLATED BY THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY
ILLUSTRATED

CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER
I. EARLY YEARS
II. 1809
III. THE PRELIMINARIES OP THE WEDDING
IV. THE BETROTHAL
V. THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY
VI. THE AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY
VII. THE WEDDING AT VIENNA
VIII. THE DEPARTURE
IX. THE TRANSFER
X. THE JOURNEY
XI. COMPI��GNE
XII. THE CIVIL WEDDING
XIII. THE ENTRANCE INTO PARIS
XIV. THE RELIGIOUS CEREMONY
XV. THE HONEYMOON
XVI. THE TRIP IN THE NORTH
XVII. THE MONTH OF JUNE, 1810
XVIII. THE BALL AT THE AUSTRIAN EMBASSY
XIX. THE BIRTH OF THE KING OF ROME
XX. THE RECOVERY
XXI. THE BAPTISM
XXII. SAINT CLOUD AND TRIANON
XXIII. THE TRIP TO HOLLAND
XXIV. NAPOLEON AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS POWER
XXV. MARIE LOUISE IN 1812
XXVI. THE EMPRESS'S HOUSEHOLD
XXVII. DRESDEN
XXVIII. PRAGUE

THE HAPPY DAYS
OF
THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE
INTRODUCTION.
In 1814, while Napoleon was banished in the island of Elba, the Empress Marie Louise and her grandmother, Marie Caroline, Queen of Naples, happened to meet at Vienna. The one, who had been deprived of the French crown, was seeking to be put in possession of her new realm, the Duchy of Parma; the other, who had fled from Sicily to escape the yoke of her pretended protectors, the English, had come to demand the restitution of her kingdom of Naples, where Murat continued to rule with the connivance of Austria. This Queen, Marie Caroline, the daughter of the great Empress, Maria Theresa, and the sister of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, had passed her life in detestation of the French Revolution and of Napoleon, of whom she had been one of the most eminent victims. Well, at the very moment when the Austrian court was doing its best to make Marie Louise forget that she was Napoleon's wife and to separate her from him forever, Marie Caroline was pained to see her granddaughter lend too ready an ear to their suggestions. She said to the Baron de M��neval, who had accompanied Marie Louise to Vienna: "I have had, in my time, very good cause for complaining of your Emperor; he has persecuted me and wounded my pride,--I was then at least fifteen years old,--but now I remember only one thing,--that he is unfortunate." Then she went on to say that if they tried to keep husband and wife apart, Marie Louise would have to tie her bedclothes to her window and run away in disguise. "That," she exclaimed, "that's what I should do in her place; for when people are married, they are married for their whole life!"
If a woman like Queen Marie Caroline, a sister of Marie Antoinette, a queen driven from her throne by Napoleon, could feel in this way, it is easy to understand the severity with which those of the French who were devoted to the Emperor, regarded the conduct of his ungrateful wife. In the same way, Josephine, in spite of her occasionally frivolous conduct, has retained her popularity, because she was tender, kind, and devoted, even after she was divorced; while Marie Louise has been criticised, because after loving, or saying that she loved, the mighty Emperor, she deserted him when he was a prisoner. The contrast between her conduct and that of the wife of King Jerome, the noble and courageous Catherine of Wurtemberg, who endured every danger, and all sorts of persecutions, to share her husband's exile and poverty, has set in an even clearer light the faults of Marie Louise. She has been blamed for not having joined Napoleon at Elba, for not having even tried to temper his sufferings at Saint Helena, for not consoling him in any way, for not