Second Wife of Napoleon Bonaparte – Part 2 – Vanilla Magazine
We left Maria Luisa on 7 March 1816 leaving Vienna for Parma together with Adam Albert von Neipperg towards his new duchy and his new life. In February she had already issued a decree by which she changed her name from Maria Luisa to Maria Luigia, Italianizing it to please her new subjects.
The Congress of Vienna had ratified the attribution of the Duchy to Maria Luisa on the basis of Napoleon’s request of 4 April 1814 in Fontainebleau, “conditio sine qua non” to abdicate without succession, that is: an income to be shared with his wife and child, the Island of Elba for him and the Duchy of Parma for Maria Luisa, his son and his descendants. In Vienna, however, the request was transformed into a simple annuity for Maria Luisa, which cannot be transmitted to her heirs due to the death of her little Napoleon Francesco, the duchy would return to the Bourbons-Parma who provisionally obtained the Duchy of Lucca.
France returned to the monarchy, but constitutional and no longer absolute, with Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI, and Italy returned to a large extent under the control of the Habsburgs: the Habsburg-Lorraine ruled Lombardy-Venetia, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Duchy of Parma Piacenza and Guastalla, the Habsburg-Este, the Duchy of Modena and that of Massa and Carrara. The ties with Austria were also very close with the reign of Ferdinand IV of Bourbon, grandfather of Maria Luisa, who became Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies with the union of the Kingdom of Naples to Sicily.
Maria Luisa on April 19, 1816 arrived at the Palazzo di Colorno in summer, which later became her residence, and the following day she triumphantly entered Parma. The people welcomed it with an enthusiasm that is almost difficult to explain. She was a stranger, she had never governed or had ever been interested in politics, she was the ex-wife of Napoleon but sometimes she reacts heartily and this duchess liked her even before seeing her at her work.
Despite the premises and the love of the population, Maria Luigia is never interested in the politics of the Duchy, behind her was Neipperg and behind him was Metternich. She had only representative functions, she only wanted tranquility, she had had very little of her in her (only) 25 years of her life.
On 1 May 1817 Albertina was born, the first daughter of Neipperg, followed by Guglielmo on 8 August 1819, Matilde in 1822 and Gustavo in 1823. The last two died very small, perhaps as soon as they were born, and there is no news of them. Strangely, the information on Maria Luigia’s children is very vague and sometimes conflicting, such as the dates of birth. Be that as it may, only Albertina and Guglielmo survived to adulthood, both considered illegitimate given that her mother was still married to Napoleon Bonaparte.
The children obtained the title of countess and count of Montenuovo (translation of their father’s surname), were entrusted to a governess and could not live in the palace with their parents. It was Pulcinella’s secret of who they were children but appearances had to be saved and this was known not only in Parma but also in Vienna.
Napoleon Francis, who by now had become little Franz, the one that Napoleon had never wanted and had feared, had been ousted and in 1817 he was also deprived of the symbolic title of Prince of Parma, but Maria Luisa’s protests were lukewarm, yes he merely asked the father for accommodation for his son.
Francis I in 1817 appointed Franz Duke of Reichstadt with the related possessions but Metternich always kept him away from any political or military role. The name Bonaparte continued to be frightening and Franz, although he had hardly known him, as he grew up showed attachment to that father who languished in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and suffered for his distant mother.
Maria Luigia went to Vienna in July 1818 for the ceremony of recognition of the titles and rank of her son whom she had not seen for two years and remained there for two months. Maria Luigia’s love for this son is always strongly emphasized, but after 1818 she only visited him every 2-3 years and Franz was very saddened when he learned of the birth of his half-brothers.
On May 5, 1821 Napoleon died but it seems that no one had informed Maria Luigia and that she only learned about it from the newspaper on July 19, or at least this is how much from her letters. Despite the (perhaps) displeasure of her but certainly the pain of her son, she limited herself to writing to him, Napoleon did not leave goods to his wife and son, Maria Luigia tried to obtain them but without success and only personal effects went to her son as a souvenir.
Now that she was widowed and freed Maria Luigia already on 8 August she regularized her relationship with Adam Albert von Neipperg with a morganatic marriage, given the disparity of rank. The children went to live in an annex of the building with the housekeeper and the tutor. The new marriage was another pain for little Franz, who stopped writing to his mother.
Adam Albert von Neipperg was appointed Governor of the Duchy, until then he had been Foreign Minister, Maria Luigia continued not to deal with politics but is still interested in the well-being of the Duchy by selling part of the few personal assets that he was to save when he left France for public works and help the population.
From 1817 to 1819 his first works were dedicated to women, the Institute of Maternity and the school of obstetrics, but also to the mentally ill with a new location for the Pazzerelli Hospice. In terms of infrastructure, he also had the bridge over the Taro built and work began on the bridge over the Trebbia. In 1821 work also began on the Ducal Theater (now Regio) and the Conservatory. He renovated the Doge’s Palace (destroyed by bombing in 1944) and for his sons they had the Villa del Ferlaro built. She was also responsible for the transformation into the museum of the Palazzo della Pilotta which houses the archaeological museum, the art gallery and the national gallery. Between 1835 and 1843 he had the bridges built over the Oil, the Nure, the Arda and the Tidone. If she as a woman of government she was influential, she was a great benefactress of her duchy of hers and this earned her the name of “Good Duchess”.
On February 22, 1829, Adam Neipperg died of a heart attack. Maria Luigia, who seemed deeply grieved, was forbidden by her father to wear mourning. This relationship with Neipperg and had always created embarrassment at the Austrian court for how much Napoleon had been a problem, her husband remained, her husband, betrayed and abandoned to his fate, and despite Neig in his will had recognized the children and wished that Maria Luigia could or at least to adopt, nor did her declaration acknowledging admitting maternity allow her to be recognized or adopted.
The Neipperg government was replaced by Josef von Werklein, a man with much more rigid ideas than his predecessor and Maria Luigia, with a more liberal tendency. In 1830 in France the popular uprisings began against King Charles X who, as ultra-realist as he was, tried to return to the “Ancien regime” contrary to his predecessor Louis XVIII who had been greeted with joy, had granted a liberal-style constitution and he had died in 1824. When Charles X suspended the constitution the population revolted with what is called the “July Revolution” and forced him to abdicate on 9 August.
The revolt of the French gave way to revolutionary uprisings also in Italy. In 1831 there were liberal riots in Modena, governed by Francesco IV Habsburg-Este, and in all the cities of Emilia Romagna, under the Papal State, which also reached Parma. If Maria Luisa was quite liberal, Francis I and von Werklein were not at all liberal, and against the crowd gathered under the ducal palace shouting “Constitution and death in Werklein” the guns and riflemen were deployed ready to intervene.
Maria Luigia was not a target of the rebellion but she was very frightened, people were counting on her but she had no power and tried to escape, she left Parma on February 14 taking refuge in Piacenza.
A provisional government ruled by Filippo Luigi Linati was established in Parma. The Duchess asked her father to replace Werklein but Francesco instead sent the troops to stifle the attempted rebellion in Parma. Maria Luigia returned to Parma on 8 August and found a discontented population and the only thing she could do to limit the damage was to grant amnesty for all the “carbonari” who had been arrested.
In Parma von Werklein was replaced by Wenzel Philipp von Maréschall, a trusted man of Metternich, but this immediately came into conflict with the Duchess, criticizing not only his liberal ideas, also a man in favor of the hard line, but also his morality, since in this period Maria Luigia seems to have had several lovers, among them the count Luigi di Sanvitale who then married his daughter Albertina.
In 1832 the health of his son Franz in Vienna had deteriorated, undermined by tuberculosis. Maria Luigia was warned when the situation was by now very serious and she rushed to Vienna in June, finding him now doomed. Franz died on July 22, 1832, at the age of only 21. Maria Luigia’s sincere pain, perhaps due to the remorse of having neglected her, her grandfather and the Viennese court over the years was great. He was buried in the Capuchin Crypt together with all the Habsburgs.
In 1833, the French count Charles-René de Bombelles (1785-1856), who fled to Austria during the French child revolution, arrived in Parma. Only six months after his arrival de Bombelles and Maria Luigia got married on February 17, 1834 with a morganatic and secret marriage.
On 2 March 1835 Francesco I died and for Maria Luigia the loss of her father was a great pain, for better or for worse it had been a strong and constant presence in her life. Maria Luigia was weak, as she also claimed, her son Franz, she needed a personality that would always guide her and perhaps this need to have someone beside her who supported her had made her decide on her third marriage, which she was not sure of. love.
The following years were peaceful, Maria Luigia took care of the family, husband, children and grandchildren, but 1848 was approaching and the Austrians in Italy were poorly tolerated. She herself saw the affection of her younger subjects fade. In early December 1847 she began to feel unwell, she died on December 17, probably of pleurisy, with thousands of people gathered under the Doge’s Palace sharing news and praying for the Good Duchess.
His body was escorted to Vienna by a squadron of Hussars and buried in the Capuchin Crypt next to his son. In 1940 Hitler did what was perhaps the only magnanimous gesture in his life and made Franz’s remains in Paris, where he returned to being Napoleon II, and rest in Les Invalides next to those of his father. The Duchy of Parma and Piacenza passed, as per the agreements of the Congress of Vienna, to Charles II of Bourbon-Parma, while Guastalla was assigned to Francesco d’Asburgo-Este.