Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1879-11-27
NapOIeOn's Marriage.

NapOleOn'B Marriage
The marriages of the Bonapartes
play an important part in the story of
their fortunes, and none of them were
so significant and important as those of
the Emperor. To one who, like him,
looked upon the world as made for
him, and upon laws merely as some
thing which were good for him to inn
pose upon others, it must have APP
peared that his two wives were admi-
rably planned for his use. Josephine
de Beauharnais was an ideal wife for a
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 certain indo-
lent grace that promised an obedience
reasonably free from jealousy. Up to
the time that he mounted the imperial
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 imagina-
ton still wider perspectives of domin-
ion, he looked for another style of wife,
and found her in Maria Louisa of Aus
tria. Her blonde beauty, formed of
pink and white color and roundly curv-
ing lines and the golden floss of a
child's hair, appealed strongly to his
iaded taste. lie was not old, but, as
he said to the Directory, ,,"one ages fast
upon the field of BATTLE" and he want
ed some such solace as this soft, unin-
tellectual beauty (somebody has called
it the Alderney style of prettiness) in
his home, if such word may be used
of the THileries. Besides, he doubtless
felt that an Emperor should have an
Emperor's daughter to wife, and this
was young girl who had 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 genuine
ly attached to her, and if he knew moth
ing 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 had always considered him
was agreeable to her. But his tumul-
tuous glory was quite too much for the
daily food of such human small being
as the Empress, 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 Neipperg.
Josephine would have had her re-
Venge if she could have foreseen the
course of history for even few years.
It is she, and not the pretty Austrian,
who will be known forever as the wife
of Napoleon. ltis her statue that rises
in marble in the public places of Paris.
1t is her name and those of her chill
dren that mark the great avenues of
the metropolis-Avenue Josephine, La
Refine Hortense, Boulevard du Prince
Eugene. Though she was ousted re-
morselessly from a throne to make
room for Maria Louisa, it was her chill
dren-the children of the creole pro-
script-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 empire;
while the Beauharnais line was to
stretch out like the swarms of kings
seen by the Thane of Cawdor in his
vision. Eugene, her heroic son, after
the iall of the Napoleons, returned to
the court of his father-in-law, the King
Of Bavaria, and became Prince of Eich-
stadt, Duke of Leuchtenberg, and first
nobleman of the kingdom. His daughter,
united to the son of Bernadotte, became
Queen of Sweden; another became
princess of HOhenzollern, and third
Empress Of Brazil. His Oldest son won
the hand of the Queen of Portugal, and
the younger married daughter of the
Gear Nicholas of Russia And what
ever doubt might be thrown on the
purity of the Napoleonic descent by
which the Emperor Napoleon III.
claimed the throne, hewas unquestion-
ABLY the son of Hortense, and was
Beauharnais and Tascher-la-P -Pagerie
beyond challenge. The grandson of
Josephine, Louis Napoleon, ruled
France in peace and with a sort Of
splendor for the space of twenty-five
years, while the period of the first Ma
poleon's reign, counting Consulate and
Empire together, was but fifteen
though so powerful was the personal
imprint made by the uncle, and so
vague was the individual character of
the nephew, that the shorter reign
seems like an age, and the longer like
an episode. Harper MGgaSt''e for De-
censbeY..
How MANY votes does the BARRIERS \