The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise by Imbert de Saint-Amand, Arthur Léon, baron, 1834-1900

Every sort of misfortune combined to smite this suffering family. While the Emperor Francis was losing the battle of Austerlitz, his wife, who was in Silesia, with only one of her children, the little Archduchess Leopoldine, who was born in 1797 and was not yet eight years old, fell seriously ill with the measles, and dreaded giving the disease to her little girl. "The only thing which would make death terrible," she wrote to her husband, "would be to die without seeing you again.... Do not take a step that will injure you or the country. Only don't let me be taken to France." Nothing disturbed her so much as the dread of falling into the hands of the enemy. The details which her husband wrote to her about his interview with Napoleon did not allay her uneasiness. "I have been as happy," he wrote, "as I could hope to be with a conqueror who holds possession of a large part of my kingdom. With regard to his treatment of me and mine, he has been very kind. It is easy to see that he is not a Frenchman." Thus the Emperor Francis ascribed to Napoleon's Italian birth the politeness with which the hero of Austerlitz treated him. Does not this simple statement suffice to show in what esteem the German sovereign held France and the French character?

The Imperial family was at last reunited in Vienna, after many vicissitudes, early in 1806. But a new misfortune awaited them the following year. The Empress, whose health was already delicate, had a miscarriage April 9, 1807, and a pleurisy which seized her carried her off in four days, in due odor of sanctity, after she had given her blessing to Marie Louise and the rest of her children. She was only thirty-five. The untimely death of the amiable and virtuous princess, whose gayety and kindness had been the life and delight of the court, plunged her whole family into deep grief.

The Emperor Francis was an excellent husband, but he was not an inconsolable widower. April 13, 1807, he lost his second wife; but less than nine months afterwards, January 6, 1808, he married his young cousin, Marie Louise Beatrice of Este, daughter of the late Archduke Ferdinand of Modena. This princess, who was born December 14, 1787, was very short, but attractive in appearance and of an excellent character. Her disposition was pleasant and her intelligence acute, but she was not the woman to give Marie Louise any taste for France or the French; for if in all Europe there was a princess who utterly detested the French Revolution and all its works, it was the third wife of Francis II.

The new Empress was but four years older than her step-daughter, Marie Louise, and at the age of twenty-one, she looked much more like the sister than the step-mother of the young Archduchess, who was then in her seventeenth year. Nevertheless, the Empress took hold of the princess's education with a high hand, and displayed as much solicitude as if she had been her real mother.

II.

1809.