The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1879-12-04
NAPOLEON'S MARRIAGES.

NAPOLEON'S MARRIAGES.
The marriages of the Bonaparte's play
an important part in the story of their
fortunes, and none of them were SO sig
nifcant and important as those of the
emperor. To one who, like him, looked
upon the world as made for him, and
upon laws as merely something which
were good for him to impose upon 9TH
ers, it must have appeared that his two
wives were admirably planned for his
use. Josephine de Beauharnais was an
ideal wife for young and rising man OF
genius. She had everything which
would appeal to fancy like his, at once
selfish and passionate. She had beauty
rank, the power of pleasing, and q Ger.
tain indolent grace that promised an
obedience reasonably free from jealousy.
Up to the time that he mounted the i'm
perial throne and seated her by his side,
she was all that his narrow heart and
boundless ambition could desire. But
after the marvellous victory of Wagram
had opened up to his fevered magma
ton still wider perspectiyes of dominion
he looked Tor another style of wife, and
found her in Maria Louisa of Austria.
Her blonde beauty, formed of pink and
white color and roundly curving lines
and the golden floss of child's hair,
appealed strongly to his jaded taste. He
was not old, but, as he said to the direc-
tory, zone ages fast upon the field of
BATTLE" and he wanted some such solace
as this soft, unintellectual beauty (some-
body has called it the Alderney style of
prettiness) in his home, if such a word
may be used of the Tuileries. Besides,
he doubtless felt that an emperor should
have an emperor's daughter to wife, and
this was young girl who had a hundred
monarchs for her ancestors, and yet she
would be gentle and obedient, and not
argue with him or answer him, and
would give him heirs. He was genuinely
attached to her, and if he knew nothing
about her. and had no premonition of
Count Neipperg, it was all the better for
him. She also was quite taken by storm
with him, and for while the novelty of
being loved by an ogre-for such she
baJ ol,-ovc npoiJara5 hin, voc o,raoo
Die to her. But his tumultuous glory
was quite too much for the daily food of
such a human small being as the En-
press, and she was doubtless relieved
when the indignant soul left his body at
Longwood, and she was free to follow
her ignoble little heart and marry Neip-
perg.
Josephine could have had her revenge
If she could have forseen the course OF
history for even few years. 1t is she,
and not the pretty Austrian who will be
known forever as the wife of Napoleon.
1t is her statue that rises in marble in
the public place of Paris. 1t is her
name and those of her children that
mark the great avenues of the metropolis
Avenue Josephine, La RENE Hortense,
Boulevard du Prince Eugene. Though
she was ousted remorselessly from q
throne to make room for Maria Louise,
it was her children-the children of the
creole proscript-who should become
the tenants of palaces, and not those OF
her rival. The Duke of Reichstadt was
to pass a youth of inglorious pleasure,
and was to die before his prime, and
leave no son to inherit his claims to the
empire; while the Beauharnais line was
to stretch out like the swarm of kings
seen by the Thane of Cawdor in his Wis
ION. Eugene, her heroic son, after the
fall of the Napoleons, returned to the
court of his father-in-law, the king OF
Bavaria, and became prince of Eichstadt
duke of Leuchtenberg, and first noble
man of the kingdom. His daughter, uni.
ted to the son of Bernadotte, become
Queen of Sweden; another became prin
cess of Hohcnzollern, and a third En-
press of Brazil. HIS Oldest son won the
hand of the queen of Portugal, and the
younger married daughter of the Czal
Nicholas of Russia. And whatever doubt
might be thrown on the purity of the
Napoleonic descent by which the En-
peror Napoleon III. claimed the throne
he was unquestionably the son of Hor
tense, and was Beauharnais and Tachel
la Pagerie beyond challenge. The grand
son of Josephine, Louis Napoleon, ruled
France IN peace with sort of splendoI
for the space of twenty-five years, while
the period OF the first Napoleon's reign
counting consulate and empire together
was but ffteen-though so powerful was
the personal imprint made by the uncle
and SO vague was the individual charac
ter of the nepew, that the shorter reigr
seems like an age, and the longer like al