Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma

Biography

Marie Louise was born at the Hofburg in Vienna in 1791, the eldest child of Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor and first Emperor of Austria, and Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily. She grew up during Austria's repeated wars with revolutionary and Napoleonic France and was raised to dislike France.

After Austria's defeat in 1809 she was married to Napoleon, by proxy in Vienna in March 1810 and in person in France in April, becoming Empress of the French and Queen of Italy. She bore him a son, styled King of Rome. Napoleon named her regent when he left to campaign in 1813 and again in January 1814, although real power stayed with him and his ministers.

After Napoleon's abdication the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau gave her the duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, which the Congress of Vienna confirmed for her lifetime while keeping her son in Austria. She did not join Napoleon on Elba, formed a lasting relationship with Count Adam Albert von Neipperg, whom she married after Napoleon's death in 1821, and later married Count Charles-René de Bombelles. She briefly fled Parma during the Carbonari uprising of 1831 and ruled the duchies until her death in 1847.