Friday, November 15, 2013

Napoleon and Family

Marie-Louise of Austria receives flowers from her husband and son. (Via Tiny-Librarian.) It always amuses me how the man who saw himself as the embodiment of the Revolution was not at peace until he had married a Habsburg and had a Habsburg child. Share

6 comments:

julygirl said...

....and crowned himself

May said...

Recently my mother was looking into this, and it seemed that both of Napoleon's marriages were invalid or at least dubious by the standards of the Church. It's a complicated story, but it seems odd that the Habsburgs let their daughter marry under these weird conditions.

elena maria vidal said...

Napoleon and Josephine were not married in the Church until immediately before their coronation. The Pope never recognized the marriage as invalid. When Napoleon married Marie-Louise, he was still considered to be married to Josephine as far as the Pope was concerned. Emperor Francis handed his daughter over to Bonaparte as a purely political measure. She was the virgin sacrifice.

lara77 said...

So the man who supposedly was the end result of the French Revolution makes himself Emperor and marries into one of Europe's oldest and greatest of families. The little Corsican opportunist was simply amazing in his sheer hutzpah.

May said...

Some of those other Habsburgs- Joseph II, Francis, etc. were really not very appealing characters… very different from M-A who was genuinely devout and ultimately heroic in her dedication to her faith.

elena maria vidal said...

Yes, Lara, Buonaparte certainly had no self-esteem problem. May, that is quite true. Joseph II closed down many contemplative monasteries in the Empire. It was terrible. He was very much under Masonic influence.