Napoleon and Marie Louise: The Second Empress. - Review - book review

Napoleon and Marie Louise: The Second Empress. Alan Palmer. Constable. [pound]20.00. 268 pages. ISBN 0-09-479860-5. The author is one of Britain's most popular and most prolific biographers, a writer who specialises in the great and famous. This biography of Napoleon's second consort tries to remedy what the author calls past neglect of Marie Louise. While her marriage only lasted 200 weeks, it was not an example of cynical international diplomacy in which the new French imperial monarchy allied itself with the Habsburgs, Europe's greatest dynasty. This is, therefore, 'the story of a political relationship in which romantic love was briefly kindled' in a Europe 'unhinged by revolution and protracted war'. In the midst of the historical survey the author never loses sight of the Austrian Archduchess who became for a short time the Empress of the French. This is history in the form of biography and is all the better for it.

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