Napoleon’s Other Wife: The story of Marie-Louise, Duchess of Parma, the lesser-known wife of Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon's other Wife is not a biography proper. It begins with Marie-Louise in 1810 preparing for her marriage to Napoleon, nineteen years after Mozart's death (the first entry in the ‘Short Chronology for the life of Marie-Louise) and also Marie-Louise's birth. These first nineteen year are never recounted. The book claims to be a reconstruction of the “puzzle of the life of Maria-Luigia”, an attempt to give ‘the valiant woman' a ‘fair hearing'. The twenty-eight resolutely positive chapters cover the years up to her death in 1847 in the manner of André Castelot, whose many volumes told the story of Napoleon either in the emperor's own words or in those of his contemporaries. Marie-Louise's time with Napoleon is of necessity brief and given perhaps a slightly too sentimental turn. We are willing to believe that Napoleon really did love his ‘bonne amie Louise'. However Josephine was always to be his ‘douce et incomparable'. Whatever the political constraints, it remains that Marie-Louise never quite managed to get either to Elba or to Paris again after 1814. Deborah Jay paints Marie-Louise during her time in Parma as little short of saintly, which is a little wearing. However, she is shown as a fully rounded figure, in charge of her own destiny, and a loving wife and mother. There are, it is true, some historical infelicities (we are told in the chronology that 26 June 1813 is the eve of the Battle of the Nations…) and some eccentricities (beginning a timeline of Marie-Louise's life with the death of Mozart, as noted above), nevertheless there is much here that is of interest. (P.H. 2015)

 
About the author:
Deborah Jay is an ex-barrister. This is her first biography.