January 26, 1873: Death of Amélie of Leuchtenberg, Empress of Brazil

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Amélie of Leuchtenberg, Emperor of the French, Emperor Pedro of Brazil, Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, House of Leuchtenberg, House of Wittelsbach, Joséphine de Beauharnais, Napoleon Bonaparte

From the Emperor’s Desk: In addressing the death of Amélie of Leuchtenberg I will focus on the arrangement of her marriage to Emperor Pedro of Brazil.

Amélie of Leuchtenberg (July 31, 1812 – January 26, 1873) was Empress of Brazil as the wife of Pedro I of Brazil. Amélie was the fourth child of General Eugène de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg and his wife Princess Augusta of Bavaria.

Her father was the son of Joséphine de Beauharnais and her first husband, Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais. When Joséphine remarried, to Napoleon Bonaparte, Eugène was adopted by the latter and made viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy.

Amélie of Leuchtenberg

Amélie’s mother was the daughter of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria and his first consort, Princess Augusta Wilhelmine of Hesse-Darmstadt.

Among Amélie’s siblings were Josephine of Leuchtenberg, Queen Consort of King Oscar I of Sweden, and Auguste de Beauharnais, 2nd Duke of Leuchtenberg, prince consort of Queen Maria II of Portugal (stepdaughter of Amélie). French Emperor Napoleon III was Amélie’s first cousin.

After the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814, Eugène de Beauharnais, having been granted the title Duke of Leuchtenberg by his father-in-law, settled in Munich. The possibility occurred to Amélie’s mother, Augusta, of marrying Amélie to the Emperor of Brazil, to guarantee the pretensions of the House of Leuchtenberg to royal status.

Marriage

After the death of his first wife, the Austrian Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, in December 1826, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil (former King Pedro IV of Portugal) sent the Marquis of Barbacena to Europe to find him a second wife.

Emperor Pedro ‘s Archduchess Maria Leopoldina of Austria was the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, and his second wife, Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily. Among her many siblings were Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria and Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Amélie of Leuchtenberg

Marquis of Barbacena’s task was not easy; several factors complicated the search. First, Emperor Pedro had stipulated four conditions: a good family background, beauty, virtue and culture. Conversely, the Emperor of Brazil did not have a particularly good image in Europe: his relationship with the Marchioness of Santos was notorious, and few eligible princesses were expected to be eager to leave the courts of Europe to marry a widower who had a tarnished reputation as a husband, becoming step-mother to his five children.

To make matters worse, the former father-in-law of Emperor Dom Pedro, Holy Roman Emperor Franz II had a low opinion of his son-in-law’s political views, and apparently acted to prevent a new marriage to ensure that his grandchildren would inherit the throne of Brazil if they survived infancy.

After refusals by eight princesses turned the ambassador into an object of scorn in the courts of Europe, the Marquis of Barbacena, in agreement with the Emperor, lowered his requirements, seeking for Dom Pedro a wife merely “good and virtuous.”

Amélie now became a good possibility, but their encounter was brought about not by the Marquis of Barbacena, but by Domingos Borges de Barros, Viscount of Pedra Branca, minister in Paris, to whom she had been pointed out.

Emperor Pedro I of Brazil

She came from a distinguished and ancient line on her mother’s side, the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, but her father, an exile who shared in the disgrace of Napoleon Bonaparte’s deposition as Emperor, was not an optimal marital match. However, that was her sole “defect”. The princess was tall, very beautiful, well proportioned, with a delicate face.

She had blue eyes and brownish-golden hair. António Teles da Silva Caminha e Meneses, Marquis of Resende, sent to verify the beauty of the young lady, praised her highly, saying that she had “a physical air that like that the painter Correggio gave us in his paintings of the Queen of Sheba”. She was also cultured and sensitive.

A contemporary piece in The Times of London affirms that she was one of the best educated and best prepared princesses in the German world.

Amélie of Leuchtenberg

The marriage contract was signed on May 29, 1829 in England, and ratified on June 30 in Munich by Amélie’s mother, the Duchess of Leuchtenberg, who had tutored her daughter personally. On July 30 of that year, in Brazil, a treaty of marriage between Pedro I and Amélie of Leuchtenberg was promulgated.

Upon confirming the marriage, Emperor Pedro definitively broke his links to the Marchioness of Santos and, as evidence of his good intentions, instituted the Order of the Rose, with the motto “Amor e Fidelidade” (“Love and Fidelity”).

Marriage of Amélie of Leuchtenberg and Emperor Pedro I of Brazil

A proxy marriage ceremony on August 2 in the chapel of the Palais Leuchtenberg in Munich was a simple affair with few in attendance, as Amélie insisted on donating to a Munich orphanage the appreciable amount Dom Pedro had sent for a ceremony with full pomp. Dom Pedro was represented by the Marquis of Barbacena. Amélie was barely seventeen years old; Dom Pedro was thirty.

Napoleon I, Emperor of the French

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Archduchess Marie Louise, Carl XIII of Sweden, Emperor of the French, Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, Joséphine de Beauharnais, Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon complex, Napoleon I, Napoleonic Wars, oséphine de Beauharnais

In today’s featured monarch section I thought I would focus on Napoleon. I will be upfront and say I am not crazy about this guy although I must admit what he did greatly impacted European history and the events surrounding him are fascinating. His presence and ambitions forced the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire. I always wondered if the end of the empire was inevitable? Had Napoleon never come along would their still be a Holy Roman Empire? Napoleon changed the history of and the map of Europe. I feel his biggest impact was in France and Germany. One of the reasons I do not care for him is because I have a hard time thinking of him as royal. To me the ancient regime of the lines of Hugh Capét were the legitimate sovereigns of France and I see the French Empire as mere usurpers. As with many things in life to the victor goes the ability to make the rules!

Napoleon was born on August 15, 1769 in the town of Ajaccio, Corsica. He was the was the second of eight children to his parents Carlo Bonaparte and Letizia Ramolino. Napoleon became a French national at the right time seeing that the Italian island of Corsica had been occupied by French forces under the command of the Comte de Vaux in 1768 and 1769. His family was of the Italian nobility, attached to Tuscany. At a young age Napoleon joined the French military as an artillery officer and his natural talent and skill for the military allowed him to rise to prominence under the France’s First Republic. He proved himself in many campaigns against the First and Second Coalitions arrayed against France. It was in 1799 that his star really began to rise when he staged a coup d’état and installed himself as First Consul. Five years later he had the French Senate proclaimed him emperor. His lust for power and land was almost boundless. The first fifteen years of the the 19th century was caught up in a series of conflicts, known as the Napoleonic Wars, that would involve every major European power.

His tumultuous relationship with his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais, has become fuel for legend. In order to give himself an heir, along with more power and prestige, he chose as his second wife Archduchess Marie Louise, daughter of Franz II, The last Holy Roman Emperor and first Emperor of Austria. They had one son, Napoleon II, who lived his life in exile in Austria after his father’s defeat. There were rumors that Napoleon II, who become Franz, Duke of Reichstadt in Austria, was the actual father of Archduke Maximilian of Austria and Emperor of Mexico, and brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph. This rumor has never been substantiated.

Napoleon certainly had enemies. Czar Alexander I saw his aim in his life was to defeat Napoleon, whom he called “the oppressor of Europe and the disturber of the world’s peace.” Napoleon set up many of his relatives as puppet kings. Jerome was made the king of Westphalia a kingdom carved out of Prussian territory. He set up his brother Joseph as the king of Spain. One positive repercussion of Napoleon’s campaigns was that Sweden got a new royal family that still sits on the throne today. A French General, Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, was very popular in Sweden for the kindness he showed Swedish prisoners in a recent campaign against Denmark. With the elderly and childless king Carl XIII of Sweden needing and heir, and with the Swedish government looking for a soldier, Bernadotte was elected Crown Prince of Sweden in 1810 and became king of Sweden and Norway in 1818.

Napoleon’s ambitions were finally thwarted on the battlefield of Waterloo in 1815 when he was soundly defeated by a multinational army lead by the Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. He was exiled once again, after having been defeated and exiled the previous year and he died on the isle of Saint Helena on May 3, 1821 at the age of only 51. His first escape from exile in 1814 interrupted the Congress of Vienna which had convened to try to repair the dame from the the Napoleonic Wars and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire. The rightful kings of France were restored and Germany was sent on its slow path to unification.

I find Napoleon amazing in that he did so much in such a short life. I also find his lust for power fascinating. With my background in psychology Napoleon makes an interesting study. He has given his name to a disorder, the Napoleon Complex: This is from wikipedia.

Napoleon complex is an informal term describing an alleged type of which is said to affect some people, especially men, who are short in stature. The term is also used more generally to describe people who are driven by a perceived handicap to overcompensate in other aspects of their lives. Other names for the term include Napoleon syndrome[1] and Short Man syndrome. It does not appear in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Although not a true disorder I do know some men who do struggle with issues of height. But was his aggressive need for power compensating for some lack in his life? Was it a drive for self-esteem? A poor self image can plague many people and what better way to bolster a shaky self-image than to proclaim ones self to be an Emperor?