Marie Louise, 1791–1847, empress of the French (1810–15) as consort of Napoleon I and duchess of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla (1816–47), daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (later Emperor of Austria as Francis I.) She was married (1810) to Napoleon I and was the mother of Napoleon II. When Napoleon I was defeated (1814), she fled to Vienna. Her duchies were awarded to her at the Congress of Vienna; she ruled them ineptly from Parma, with the assistance of her lover, Count Adam Adalbert von Neipperg, whom she married morganatically in 1821. After his death (1829) she married the comte de Bombelles.
See biographies by J. A. Mahan (1931) and P. Turnbull (1971).
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