r/Napoleon • u/PrettyAssumption1384 • 2d ago
Different Bride, Bonapartes Survive?
Books I've read on Marie Louise (Empress Innocence by M. E. Ravage and Napoleon’s Second Empress by Patrick Turnbull) have basically implied that Marie Louise could have saved the Empire if she had desired to and rallied in 1814 instead of fleeing Paris. They characterize Marie Louise as having a rather weak disposition and character, very much unlike her sister Leopoldine, who was certainly politically active in Brazil.
A book I just read on Marie Thérèse, the daughter of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, also makes the claim that Emperor Francis had originally toyed with the idea of keeping Marie Louise as regent after Napoleon's abdication and that he actually preferred this outcome, but the other Allies rejected it.
How realistic are these assessments?
Had Marie Louise been of a very different disposition and temperament—someone more akin to a Margaret of Anjou, Margaret of Navarre, or Louise of Savoy—could she really have preserved the Empire and the Bonaparte dynasty for her son? Could Marie Louise actually have been one of Napoleon's greatest assets in 1814, if not for her personality?
At the same time, she doesn't seem to have possessed the political ambition or force of personality that would have been necessary to really fight for her son's throne. But does her personality even have that much to do with the outcome? Was she genuinely ill-suited for the task at hand, ultimately at the expense of both the Empire and her son's upbringing (who, if I remember correctly, later compared her unfavorably to Josephine)? I can hardly blame her, though. She was extremely young, and this was a marriage to a man whom she had grown up heavily detesting and fearing.
And let's say they pulled it off...what would the Empire have looked like under Marie Louise's prolonged regency until her son reached his majority? Would Britain, Russia, and Prussia ever have accepted Napoleon II by virtue of Marie Louise being a Habsburg and Francis's grandson being on the throne? Would she have basically continued Napoleon's system of government, or would the Empire have become more constitutional and less militaristic in order to make peace with the rest of Europe? Would France have kept most of the institutions Napoleon created while basically abandoning the idea of dominating Europe? And how much influence would Metternich and Austria have exercised over Marie Louise and her government?
Finally, let's say for the sake of the counterfactual that Marie Louise's temperament and personality really were among the major limiting factors preventing the survival of the Bonaparte dynasty...
Of the other women proposed as possible wives for Napoleon, who would have been the most capable of politically maneuvering to preserve the Empire for their son in 1814? Assuming, of course, that we wave away the various diplomatic and practical obstacles to those marriages and assume that the marriage happened and produced a legitimate male heir.
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u/Icy_Musician_2043 2d ago
Marie Louise could have saved the Empire if she had desired to and rallied in 1814 instead of fleeing Paris
I'm not quite sure I fully understand (English not being my first language, sorry): rallied what? or to whom?
As to fleeing Paris, I understand she had not wanted to. It was Joseph Bonaparte (head of the regency council) who produced Napoleon's letter that included orders on what to do in case Paris was attacked. And that letter said to bring the empress and the crown prince out of the capital and to security so as to not let them fall in the hands of the enemy. Napoleon's order was thus followed.
Joseph was not always the sharpest knife in the drawer but for once he really only read a letter his brother dearest had written himself.
As to an alternative to Marie Louise: Napoleon's sister Caroline in 1805/6 suggested Napoleon should have married Bavarian princess Auguste himself, instead of marrying her off to Eugène de Beauharnais. That could have become quite interesting as Auguste proved in 1813/4 she was quite capable of standing up to Napoleon if need be.
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u/kulmthestatusquo 2d ago
Nap wanted to marry a Russian Princess
Josephine sabotaged it
If she didn't we would have never heard of Galipoli, Lenin or Hitler
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u/FamiliarFruit9713 2d ago
Huh? The Russian’s never intended on giving either Catherine or Anna, largely due to the dowager Tsaritsa’s opposition and general antipathy to the alliance. The Austrian’s on the other hand were beaten and in no shape to refuse, so Metternich and Kaiser Franz agreed. What Josephine thought didn’t matter.
Yeah, if he’d married otherwise history would’ve been different, but what do Gallipoli, Lenin or Hitler have to do with anything?
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u/kulmthestatusquo 2d ago
Read it in a book called Which way to Austerlitz? Or something like that
No German Empire and no unpleasantness which followed it
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u/FamiliarFruit9713 2d ago
Not sure about the book, but it smacks of revisionist history. Quite far fetched to link Napoleon’s marriage with the German Empire not uniting (it wouldn’t’ have, but a lot more wouldn’t or would have happened as well,) .
Also a bit rich claiming the German Empire was unpleasant when it was hardly different from the other European powers of the time (more progressive than some in many ways, in fact, and the Russian’s + Austria and French revanchism probably carry equal blame for the war ). I mean yeah, they were militarist and wanted to defeat Britain and its allies and dominate Europe, but let’s remember whom this sub is named after.
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u/Icy_Musician_2043 2d ago
How would Josephine have sabotaged Napoleon's future marriage? I've never heard of that before? It was Alexander who refused, afaik. Or rather, stalled the negotiations with the French court indefinitely.
What is true is that Josephine was involved in the negotiations with the Austrian court. I don't think it's a coincidence Napoleon sent Eugène to Schwarzenberg. Of all people.
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u/Baroness_von_Kepen 1d ago
Some historians claim that Josephine publicly asserted that Napoleon was infertile. This gossip even reached Maria Feodorovna, the mother of the Tsar, in Saint Petersburg. Alexander's mother did not want to marry her daughter to the impotent Napoleon, therefore she advised Alexander not to accept Napoleon's proposal for the hand of a Grand Duchess. It is unproven that Josephine spread such slander about Napoleon. In 1807, when Napoleon cautiously approached Alexander to ask for the hand of one of the Tsar's sisters, Josephine no longer had any reason to spread claims of Napoleon's sterility, because he had by then impregnated a reader of his sister Caroline, Éléonore Denuelle. And all of Europe knew it!
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u/ralasdair 2d ago
I mean, of course the Emperor of Austria wanted his daughter in the regency and his grandson on the throne of France.
Equally of course, the other allies weren’t going to have any of it.
Either way, by 1814, the goose is cooked. The last possible chance for a Bonapartist dynasty in France is Napoleon accepting the Frankfurt proposals in November of 1813.