Tea at Trianon: Baltimore’s Betsy Bonaparte

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, December 18, 2023

Baltimore’s Betsy Bonaparte

A story which always intrigued me growing up in Maryland was the story of Elizabeth Patterson, a young Baltimore lady who married one of Napoleon's brothers. The Pattersons were one of the wealthiest families in Maryland, second only to the Carrolls. Like many old families of Maryland and Virgina, the Pattersons certainly deemed one of their daughters worthy of a Bonaparte; whether an upstart Bonaparte would be worthy of a Patterson was another story. In spite of being married by Bishop John Carroll, Jerome Bonaparte deserted Elizabeth. It was not entirely his fault; his brother Napoleon threatened him with poverty and exile. Jerome preferred his prestige as a Bonaparte prince to being with his beloved wife. At Napoleon's command, he married a fat German princess. Since the Bonaparte rule was short-lived, the sacrifice was for nothing. Elizabeth lived to be a feisty, rich old lady, full of stories of her naughty and handsome husband. She attempted to marry her son to a European princess, but Bo preferred a Maryland girl.

From The Baltimore Banner:

After life’s fitful fever, French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s estranged family sleeps well in Baltimore.
So says the epitaph etched on Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte’s tombstone in Green Mount Cemetery. The fever perhaps first flared when her notorious brother-in-law objected to her nuptials to Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon’s younger brother, on Christmas Eve in 1803. Though the marriage eventually ended in divorce, it ignited for Elizabeth what would become a decadeslong legal battle for diplomatic recognition and legitimacy for her son.
“Nature never intended me for obscurity,” the Baltimore Bonaparte once stated in a letter to her father.
Long before Baltimore’s other famous divorcée Wallis Simpson fell in love with a European ruler, Patterson’s love story did not sit well with her new family in France. Thursday’s anticipated release of the biopic “Napoleon,” directed by Ridley Scott and starring Joaquin Phoenix, has renewed interest in Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte and her tussle with the French emperor. (Read more.)

More HERE.