Marie Louise

Marie Louise (12 December 1791 – 17 December 1847) was the second wife of Napoleon, Empress of the French from 1810 to 1814, and later Duchess of Parma. The eldest daughter of Emperor Francis II of Austria, she was married to Napoleon by proxy in 1810 as the seal of the Franco-Austrian alliance after his divorce from Joséphine. In 1811 she bore the longed-for heir, François Charles Joseph Napoleon, the King of Rome. During the campaigns of 1813–1814 she served as regent in Paris. After Napoleon's fall she did not follow him into exile; the Congress of Vienna granted her the Duchy of Parma, which she ruled competently until her death. Though a political marriage, it briefly bound the upstart Napoleonic dynasty to the oldest royal house in Europe, and through her son the Bonaparte claim survived into the next generation. She maintained a dignified correspondence with her son, who died young in Vienna in 1832 without ever seeing France again.