France, which, fourteen years before, had wanted to convert every monarchy into a republic, was now endeavoring to turn the oldest republics into monarchies. The illustrious republics of Genoa and Venice had become an integral part, the one of the French Empire, the other of the Kingdom of Italy. The Batavian Republic was about to be transformed into the Kingdom of Holland. When it became known in Paris that this new kingdom was to be created by the Emperor's will, people wondered who was to fill the throne; some were betting on Louis Bonaparte; others on his brother Jerome; still others on Murat. The Emperor, however, had settled the question, and without even consulting him, had decided that Louis was to be King of Holland. This new monarch, who was born September 2, 1778, was then twenty-seven years old. Four years before he had married Josephine's daughter, Hortense de Beauharnais, but the marriage had been an unhappy one. As he himself wrote, his marriage was celebrated in sadness. The author of a very remarkable study, _Holland and King Louis_, M. Albert Reville, says with great truth: "Like Hortense, Louis had literary tastes; but there the resemblance ceases. It was not that there was nothing romantic in Hortense's character; she was among the first to become interested in the Middle Ages, the Gothic revival, the imitation of the troubadours; but her romanticism was wholly different from that of her husband. Her ideal was, perhaps, a young and handsome soldier, pensive when away from the lady of his thoughts, but not when in her company." M. Reville goes on: "Such a character could not understand the sensitiveness, the shrinking, morbid melancholy of the husband thrust upon her. Her gaiety, her devotion to pleasure, the frivolity of her talk, could only pain more and more a man of a gloomy temperament, who took the greatest care of his health, who fretted himself over the most trivial details, and whose distrust amounted to injustice."