Queen Hortense: A Life Picture of the Napoleonic EraMühlbach, L. (Luise)
History
Queen Hortense: A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era
Mühlbach, L. (Luise)
Hortense, Queen, consort of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, 1783-1837 -- Fiction
Under the shadow of this _tricolore_ Louis Philippe mounted the throne,
and the people--to whom the three colors recalled the glorious era of
the empire--the people shouted with delight, and in order to indulge
their sympathies they demanded for France--not the son of Napoleon, not
Napoleon II.--but the ashes of Napoleon, and the emperor's statue on the
Palace Vendôme. Louis Philippe accorded them both, but with these
concessions he thought he had done enough. He had accepted the
_tricolore_ of the empire; he had promised that the emperor should watch
over Paris from the summit of the Vendôme monument, and to cause his
ashes to be brought to Paris--these were sufficient proofs of love.
They might be accorded the dead Napoleon without danger, but it would be
worse to accord them to living Napoleons; such a course might easily
shake the new throne, and recall the allies to Paris.
The hatred of the princes of Europe against Napoleon was still continued
against his family, and it was with them, as Metternich said, "a
principle never to tolerate another Napoleon on the throne."
The European powers had signified to the King of France, through their
diplomatic agents, their readiness to acknowledge him, but they exacted
one condition--the condition that Louis Philippe should confirm or renew
the decree of exile fulminated by the Bourbons against the Bonapartes.
Louis Philippe had accepted this condition; and the Bonapartes, whose
only crime was that they were the brothers and relatives of the deceased
emperor, before whom not only France, but all the princes of Europe, had
once bent the knee--the Bonapartes were once more declared strangers to
their country, and condemned to exile!
CHAPTER IV.
THE REVOLUTION IN ROME, AND THE SONS OF HORTENSE.
It was a terrible blow to the Bonapartes, this new decree of banishment!
Like a stroke of lightning it entered their hearts, annihilating their
holiest hopes and most ardent desires, and their joy over the glorious
and heroic revolution of July gave place to a bitter sense of
disappointment.
Nothing, therefore, remained for them but to continue the life to which
they had become somewhat accustomed, and to console themselves, for
their new disappointment, with the arts and sciences.
At the end of October, in the year 1830, Hortense determined to leave
Arenenberg and go to Rome with her son, as she was in the habit of doing
every year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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