My latest article: Carl XIV Johan's coronation 200 years ago

200 years ago today, Carl XIV Johan was crowned King of Norway in Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, which was, for many reasons, a remarkable event. For one thing, Carl Johan, the former revolutionary general Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, did not have a drop of blue blood in his vein. Carl Johan did nothing to deny this and rather based his legitimacy on his military deeds, which had paved his way to the thrones of Norway and Sweden.
In the new issue of Aftenposten Historie (no 8 - 2018), Norway's largest history magazine, I write about how this came to be expressed at his coronation and in the crown jewels Carl Johan commissioned for his coronation, including the sword he had carried in the battle where he helped defeat his great rival Napoléon.

My latest article: The Second Empire

My thirtieth and last article of 2016 is about the Second Empire, i.e. the reign of Emperor Napoléon III of the French from 1852 to 1870. Like the Emperor himself, the Empire was full of paradoxes, and it turned out to be the last time France was a monarchy. The article appears in the January 2017 issue of Majesty (Vol. 38, No. 1), which is on sale in Britain from today and in other countries within two weeks, while an excellent exhibition on the splendours of the Second Empire can be seen at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris until 15 January.

My latest articles: Empress Marie-Louise & Swedish royal dukedoms

The July issue of Majesty (Vol. 37, No. 7) went on sale in Britain last week and this month I have contributed an article on Empress Marie-Louise of the French, Napoléon I's second wife. In the eyes of posterity she has been overshadowed by her predecessor Joséphine, but she is fondly remembered in Parma, where she reigned as duchess from 1816 until her death in 1847 and where the bicentenary of her arrival is commemorated this year.
Also just out is Royalty Digest Quarterly no. 2 - 2016, in which I write about Swedish royal dukedoms - their origins, history and statistics - which might be of some interest these days, when new dukes and duchesses are born so frequently that many find it hard to keep track.

My latest articles: Royal Trieste & Princess Ashraf

I have written two articles in the March issue of Majesty (Vol. 37, No. 3), which went on sale in Britain last week. The first one deals with the Italian city of Trieste, once the Habsburg Empire's thriving, cosmopolitian port on the Adriatic but now something of a backwater.
The article focuses on the many royals who made Trieste their home, more often than not as exiles, among them two of Louis XV's daughters who escaped the Revolution, Napoléon I's youngest brother ex-King Jérôme of Westphalia, Queen Maria Carolina of Naples and Sicily and the Carlist pretenders to the Spanish throne, several of whom are buried in Trieste's Cathedral. On the other hand, two princes - Archduke Maximilian of Austria and Prince Amedeo of Savoy, Duke of Aosta - spent their happiest years in Trieste, where they resided at Miramare Palace, but both these princes would die in captivity on another continent.
The second article is about Princess Ashraf of Iran, the last Shah's powerful twin sister, who died in January at the age of 96.

My latest articles: Norwegian silver jubilee and Waterloo bicentenary

It is still 2015, but the January 2016 issue of Majesty (Vol. 37, No. 1), which contains two articles by me, is now on sale. On 17 January, the King and Queen will celebrate their silver jubilee and in the first article I look back at the events of 1991: the death and funeral of King Olav V, the accession of King Harald V, his and Queen Sonja's solemn blessing and the challenges that faced the new King and Queen. In the second article, I report on this year's bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, starting with the death of the 99-year-old 8th Duke of Wellington on the very last day of 2014 and ending with Prince Napoléon receiving the Freedom of the City of London at the end of November.

On this date: Death of Empress Joséphine 200 years ago

Today is the 200th anniversary of the death of Joséphine, Empress of the French, the first wife of Emperor Napoléon I. The Empress died at Malmaison Palace in Reuil outside Paris on 29 May 1814, aged 50, little more than a month after Napoléon's first abdication.
Born Rose Tascher de La Pagerie on Martinique on 23 June 1763, she was sent to France at the age of 16 to marry Vicomte Alexandre de Beauharnais, an arranged marriage which turned out to be unhappy. While her estranged husband was guillotined in 1794, Rose, who had been imprisoned, was lucky to be alive when the Terror came to an end a few days later.
In 1796 she went on to marry the young and promising General Napoléon Bonaparte, who gave her the name Joséphine. Theirs is often considered one of history's great love stories, but Joséphine seems at first to have been rather cool towards her husband, whose passionate letters often went unaswered. Her infidelity caused him much grief, but with his rise to power the tables were turned and it was Joséphine who found herself having to accept her husband's affairs with other women.
Having been elected Emperor of the French in 1804 Napoléon crowned Joséphine Empress, the scene which is brilliantly captured by David in his famous painting of the coronation. However, Joséphine, who had two children by her first husband, proved unable to bear Napoléon and an heir, thus putting the future of the dynasty in jeopardy. In 1809 the Emperor, at the height of his glory, therefore found that he had little choice but to put his feelings aside and divorce Joséphine. In 1810 he married Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, who the following year bore him the longed-for son, the King of Rome.
Retaining the title of Empress, Joséphine retreated to Malmaison, the château just west of Paris which had been purchased in the early days of her marriage to Napoléon. When Napoléon was forced to abdicate in April 1814 Empress Marie-Louise fled to her native Vienna, taking with her the King of Rome. Joséphine remained at Malmaison, while Emperor Alexander I of Russia set himself up as the protector of the former Empress and her children, Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy and Queen Hortense of Holland. During a chilly evening walk with the Russian Emperor Joséphine contracted pneumonia and died within days.
When Napoléon, at that time exiled to Elba, read of her death in a newspaper he shut himself in his room for days. Following his return to France, the Hundred Days and his final defeat at Waterloo in June 1815 it was to Malmaison that he retreated before surrendering to the British and being deported to St Helena, where he died in 1821. While Joséphine's last words are said to have been "Bonaparte...Elba...Marie-Louise", his were allegedly "France...the army...at the head of the army...Joséphine".
One of history's ironies is that while Napoléon repudiated Joséphine in order to sire an heir, that heir died almost a prisoner in Vienna at the age of 21, while it was Joséphine's grandson who restored the Empire as Napoléon III in 1852. Through her son, Empress Joséphine is also the ancestress of the current monarchs of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg and Belgium.
On Monday a service commemorating the bicentenary of her death will be held in the small Church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul in Rueil, where the Empress is buried. Despite the continuing appeal of their love story, Joséphine's grave, unlike Napoléon's, attracts no tourists. When I was first there, the day after having visited the Invalides, where tourists crowd around Napoléon's tomb, I found the church entirely empty. The second time I went there someone had left a rose on Empress Joséphine's tomb.

Book news: Some books due this autumn

With autumn approaching it seems this year’s book harvest will be a rather rich one. Among the most interesting titles expected in the coming months is Dynastiet Glücksburg - En danmarkshistorie (“The Glücksburg Dynasty: A History of Denmark”) by the historian Jes Fabricius Møller, a political history of the current Danish royal house which is due to be published by Gad at the end of September. The history of the Danish monarchy will also be covered in a new work on the tombs of Danish kings, Danske kongegrave, which is also due this autumn.
The King of Sweden is celebrating his fortieth anniversary on the throne in September, which is the occasion for the book Mina 40 år för Sverige (“My Forty Year for Sweden”), which consists of some 300 photos from the past four decades to which the King has added his comments.
Queen Silvia is probably not looking forward to the publication later this month of Erik Åsard’s book Drottningens hemlighet (“The Queen’s Secret”), which again addresses the issue of her father’s membership of the German Nazi party and his actions during the Second World War.
That war will also be at the centre of the sixth volume of Tor Bomann-Larsen’s biography of King Haakon VII of Norway, which will be published in mid-October and which will take the story from June to September 1940. The events of that crucial year will obviously also be addressed in Halvdan Koht - Veien mot framtiden (“Halvdan Koht: The Road to the Future”), the historian Åsmund Svendsen’s biography of the eminent historian Halvdan Koht, who served as foreign minister in Johan Nygaardsvold’s government and consequently had to accept some of the blame for Norway’s being poorly prepared for the German invasion on 9 April 1940.
The upcoming centenary of the outbreak of the First World War has already led to a number of books. One which seems particularly promising is The War that Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War by the historian Margaret MacMillan, who is perhaps best known for her book on the Paris peace conference of 1919. That book will be out at the middle of October. The military historian Max Hastings will give his version of those events in Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914, to be published in September.
The First World War was unleashed by the assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian thrones, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg. Their story is told by Greg King and Sue Woolmans in The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Murder that Changed the World, which is due to be published in September.
The lead-up to the Second World War sets the stage for Peter Conradi’s Hot Dogs and Cocktails: When FDR Met King George VI at Hyde Park on Hudson, which relates the story of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Britain’s visit to the United States and its president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1939. Peter Conradi, a journalist at Sunday Times, is best known as the author of The King’s Speech, the book behind the Academy Award-winning film, but has also written The Great Survivors: How Monarchy Made it into the Twenty-First Century, an interesting book (so far published in English, French, Swedish and Dutch) on the European monarchies of today.
The long-awaited second volume of Philip G. Dwyer’s biography of Emperor Napoléon I of France, Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power, 1799-1815, will be published in early November.
This week will see the publication of a new biography of Mary Queen of Scots, Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots, by Linda Porter, who has earlier written acclaimed biographies of Queen Mary I of England and Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII’s six queens.
Also out this week is Axel & Margaretha: A Royal Couple, written by the Danish journalist Randi Buchwaldt and published by Rosvall Royal Books. This richly illustrated book tells the story of Prince Axel and Princess Margaretha of Denmark, who played more significant parts in the lives of the Scandinavian royal families than their fairly remote genealogical positions would suggest.
The life of Queen Christina after her abdication in 1654 is the topic of Drottning utan land - Kristina i Rom by the historian Erik Petersson, which will be published in September. The book, which is the 28-year-old author’s fourth, is the sequel to his earlier book on Queen Christina’s reign, Maktspelerskan (2011).
November will see the publication of a biography of Princess Louise of Britain, Duchess of Argyll, the somewhat unconventional daughter of Queen Victoria of Britain. The Mystery of Princess Louise: Queen Victoria’s Rebellious Daughter is written by Lucinda Hawksley.

Prince Carl Philip renounces Galliera inheritance

Svenska Dagbladet reports that Prince Carl Philip of Sweden has agreed to let the Galliera inheritance, which consists of an exquisite art collection and a financial fund, pass to his sister Crown Princess Victoria, although the Prince would be the legal inheritor according to the terms laid down by Emperor Napoléon I of the French.
The art collection contains some sixty Italian works and are among the jewels of the Swedish royal collection. Piero di Cosimo’s “Madonna with Child” is widely considered the greatest masterpiece of the collection, while the financial fund was worth millions already at the time of the death of King Gustaf VI Adolf in 1973.
The reason why Prince Carl Philip rather than his elder sister has, until now, been heir to the Galliera inheritance, is that this is an entail governed by male primogeniture.
The Duchy of Galliera, which lies in the province of Bologna, was bestowed by Napoléon I, Emperor of the French and King of Italy, upon the eldest child of his adopted son, Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy, on 14 May 1913. The child, named Joséphine after her paternal grandmother the Empress, also held the title Princess of Bologna, which had been given her shortly after her birth in 1807. After the fall of Napoléon, his adoptive granddaughter retained possession of her duchy, but never visited it. In 1823 she married Crown Prince Oscar of Sweden and of Norway, but as the income from the Duchy was considered too low and it lay unpractically far away from Sweden, she eventually decided to sell it. Finding a buyer took a decade, but in 1837 the Duchy was sold to Marquis Raffaele de Ferrari, who was created Duke of Galliera by Pope Gregory XVI the following year.
Works of art and furniture from the Ducal Palace in Galliera were transferred to Sweden, and in her will, drawn up on 6 June 1876, the day before her death, Dowager Queen Josephina confirmed that the collection and the money from the sale should be inherited undivided by the eldest son of each generation.
As her two eldest sons had already died, this meant that the inheritance passed to her third son, King Oscar II, from him to King Gustaf V and then to King Gustaf VI Adolf. As his eldest son had predeceased him, the Galliera inheritance passed to his grandson Carl XVI Gustaf in 1973. However, when the Act of Succession was amended in 1980, King Carl Gustaf’s eldest child, Victoria, replaced her younger brother Carl Philip as heir to the throne, which, until now, has meant that the Galliera inheritance would have split from the main royal line.
(It could be added that the title Duke of Galliera still exists. The widow of Raffaele de Ferrari, whose name lives on in the Musée Galliera, her Parisian mansion which is now a museum of fashion, bequeathed the Italian properties to Prince Antoine, Duke of Montpensier, son of King Louis-Philippe I of the French and a Prince (Infante) of Spain by his marriage to the sister of Queen Isabel II of Spain. Following the death of the Dowager Duchess in 1888, Antoine was also created Duke of Galliera by King Umberto I of Italy. The current and fifth Duke of Galliera is his great-great-grandson Don Alfonso de Orleans-Borbón y Ferrara-Pignatelli).

Book news: Some royal books expected in 2012

As usual I will begin the new year with a survey of some of the books due to be published this year. The royal weddings and jubilees of 2010 and 2011 helped make those two years unusually rich on the book front, but 2012 also has some jubilees and related books to offer.
First out is Queen Margrethe II of Denmark’s jubilee next week. The museums at Amalienborg and Frederiksborg will both host exhibitions to mark her forty years on the throne and the former will focus on the Queen’s dresses. To accompany the exhibition Katia Johansen, who has for many years been a curator at the Royal Collections, has written Dronningens kjoler, which will be out next week.
The recent TV show on royal jewels is expected to result in a book to be published by Lindhardt og Ringhof in April, titled De kongelige juveler, written by Anna von Lowzow and Bjarne Steen Jensen. Anna von Lowzow is identical with Anna Lerche, a filmmaker at Nordisk Film who some may remember for her work on the A Royal Family series and book nearly ten years ago, while Bjarne Steen Jensen considers himself a jewellery expert and is the author of the not very reliable Juvelerne i det danske kongehus.
While Queen Margrethe celebrates her forty years on the throne, her third cousin Queen Elizabeth II of Britain will on 6 February be able to mark the sixtieth anniversary of her accession. Several books have already been published to mark the diamond jubilee – among them books by Robert Hardman, Andrew Marr and Sarah Bradford, of which I will post reviews in the foreseeable future – and on Tuesday Sally Bedell Smith, author of several well-received biographies, will join the rank of Elizabeth II biographers with her Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, of nearly 700 pages, to be published by Penguin.
The British historian Kate Williams’s contribution to the jubilee is Young Elizabeth: The Making of Our Queen, to be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on 12 April. I suppose this slim volume (208 pages) may be considered some sort of sequel to Williams’s similar book on Queen Victoria of Britain.
This will, by the way, not be Williams’s only book this year; in June her biography of the Empress Joséphine of the French, Mistress of Empires: The Extraordinary Life of Josephine Bonaparte, will be published by Hutchinson.
February will also see the 75th birthday of King Harald V of Norway, on which occasion the National Museum will open the first of their six exhibitions based on the Royal Collections. The exhibitions will be accompanied by a sumptuous book titled Arv og tradisjon – De kongelige samlinger, which will be published by Orfeus and contain contributions by Tor Bomann-Larsen, Per Egil Hegge, Nina Høye, Ingeborg Anna Lønning, Knut Ljøgodt, Widar Halén, Bjørn Høie, Knut Ormhaug, Jan Haug, Sven Gj. Gjeruldsen and myself.
Also on the occasion of the King’s 75th birthday Dag Erik Pedersens has written Idrettskongen, an authorised book on the King’s interest in sports, which will be published by Gyldendal. The Queen will turn 75 in July and in the autumn Gyldendal will publish the much-awaited authorised biography of her, written by Ingar Sletten Kolloen.
The 150th anniversary of the death of Prince Consort Albert of Britain in December 1861 was recently commemorated by a conference on male consorts in history and I hear that this conference will result in a book. Meanwhile I. B. Tauris has published two biographies of such consorts, namely Jules Stewart’s Albert: A Life and Harry Kelsey’s Philip of Spain, King of England: The Forgotten Sovereign. Although both these books bear the date 2012 they did actually go on sale before Christmas.
Another British book expected this year is Jane Ridley’s Bertie: A Biography of Edward VII, which has been postponed at least twice.

My latest articles: Queen Margrethe, Elsa Cedergren and three reviews

In mid-January Queen Margrethe II of Denmark will celebrate her forty years on the throne with three days of festivities. On occasion of the jubilee I have written an article titled “Renaissance Queen”, which deals with what I consider some of the most interesting aspects of her reign and which appears in the January issue of the British monthly magazine Majesty (Vol. 33, No. 1), published on 20 December.
Also out just before Christmas was this year’s final issue of Royalty Digest Quarterly (no 4 – 2011), which includes my biographical article on the humanitarian and activist Elsa Cedergren (1893-1996), the youngest daughter of Prince Oscar Bernadotte and sister of the famous Folke Bernadotte. It seems Elsa Cedergren is now primarily remembered for having been the (so far) only Bernadotte to reach the age of 100, but there were certainly much else of interest about her.
To the same magazine I have also contributed reviews of Philip Eade’s excellent Young Prince Philip: His Turbulent Early Life and Ilana D. Miller’s The Four Graces: Queen Victoria’s Hessian Granddaughters. (Concerning the latter title the editor has, curiously, chosen to add a second “review” by Charlotte Zeepvat, who appears to be a friend of the author and is thanked profusely in the book’s preface for her help and support.)
The Society for Court Studies has also brought out this year’s second issue of their journal The Court Historian (Volume 16, 2), which contains several very interesting articles and to which I have been happy to contribute a review article about the exhibition “Härskarkonst – Napoleon, Karl Johan, Alexander” (“Staging Power – Napoleon, Charles John, Alexander”), which was held at the National Museum in Stockholm from September 2010 to January 2011.
These bring the total number of my published works this year up to nineteen, consisting of seven topical or biographical articles, four op-eds, six reviews, one obituary and one letter to the editor.

New books: Napoléon, his age and his ideas

Given that there are literally hundreds of thousands of books on Napoléon I, I generally wonder each time a new one appears what is its purpose. Many of them are obviously superfluous, but Alan Forrest’s recent book Napoleon, published by Quercus, stands out as one which is worth reading.
Forrest is professor of modern history at the University of York and may be considered one of the leading British scholars on the revolutionary and Napoleonic epochs in French history. He repeatedly states his initial reluctance to make the transition from writing social history of the revolution to a biography of Napoléon and this also influences the book, but in a good way.
If there are individuals who defined their age in such a way that their biography and the history of their era are virtually the same thing, Napoléon is obviously one of the best examples. Forrest’s book thus combines the story of Napoléon’s life with the history of France and Europe during that half-century.
The story is framed by chapters on the late Emperor’s reburial in Paris in 1840 at the beginning and his “life after death” at the end. There is less about his personal life than in many other biographies and Forrest generally avoids the lengthy accounts of campaigns and battles with which some of Napoléon’s biographers try their readers’ patience.
On the other hand Professor Forrest is particularly strong on the ideas that shaped Napoléon and his age and on the system which Napoléon created. The book is mercifully not part of the propaganda war which many of Napoléon’s biographers, perhaps in particular the British ones, still seem to be fighting. Indeed Forrest’s book is neither laudatory nor vindictive, but rather critical in the best meaning of that word and the author gives credit where he thinks credit is due and criticises what he thinks deserves to be criticised.
The book is entirely based on secondary sources and there are no new revelations to be found in this book (indeed it is by now hardly possible to find unknown primary sources), but Alan Forrest’s interpretation of the man and the age and his clear analyses make for one of the most interesting books on Napoléon to be published in recent years.

What to see: The Imperial Vault, Vienna

On Saturday Otto von Habsburg will be laid to rest in the Imperial Vault beneath the Capuchin Church in the New Market (Neuer Markt) in Vienna, thus literally joining his forebears.
It was in 1599 that the first Capuchin monks came to Vienna and only eighteen years later Empress Anna, consort of Empress Matthias, granted the Capuchins a church in the New Market and stipulated that she should be buried in its crypt. The Empress died a year later and was followed by her husband three months later. However, it was only in 1633 that work on the church had progressed to the extent that the imperial coffins could be transferred there.
Emperor Ferdinand III soon had to have the crypt enlarged and several expansions have followed throughout the centuries to give room for the coffins of generations of Habsburgs. Joseph II had it closed and walled up, but reopening it was one of the first acts of his brother Leopold II.
The Imperial Vault now consists of nine crypts and nearly 150 people are buried there. Only one of them is not a Habsburg relative: Countess Caroline von Fuchs-Mollard (1675-1754), who was the governess of Maria Theresia, on whose express wish she was interred with the imperial family.
The oldest of the crypts is the Founders or Angel Crypt, which contains the coffins of Emperor Matthias and Empress Anna. It is followed by the Leopold Crypt, built by Leopold I; the Karl Crypt, built by Karl VI; the Maria Theresia Crypt, built by Franz I Stephan and Maria Theresia; the Franz Crypt, built by Franz II/I; the Ferdinand and Tuscany Crypts, built by Ferdinand I; the New Crypt (built 1960-1962); and finally the Franz Joseph Crypt and the adjacent Crypt Chapel (built 1908-1909).
Emperor Matthias (1557-1619) was as mentioned the first Habsburg ruler to be buried there. He has been followed by Ferdinand III (1608-1657), Joseph I (1678-1711), Leopold I (1640-1705), Karl VI (1685-1740), Franz I Stephan (1708-1765), Maria Theresia (1717-1780), Joseph II (1741-1790), Leopold II (1747-1792), Franz II/I (1768-1835), Ferdinand I (1793-1875) and Franz Joseph I (1830-1916). The remains of the last Habsburg emperor, Karl I (1887-1922), are still in Madeira, where he died in exile following the downfall of the Empire. There is, however, a bust to his memory in the Crypt Chapel.
Another notable absentee is Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 unleashed World War I. He and his morganatic wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, is buried in the crypt of Artstetten Palace, but the vault has a plaque commemorating, as it says, “the first victims of World War I 1914-1918”.
The most sumptuous of the memorials is perhaps the double sarcophagus of Franz I Stephan and Maria Theresia (third photo), commissioned from Balthazar Ferdinand Moll long before their deaths. The sarcophagus has reliefs showing great moments of their reigns and their love for each other is symbolised by how their sculptures look each other in the eye.
The last Holy Roman Emperor and first Emperor of Austria, Franz II/I (first and fourth photos) lie in the middle of the Franz Crypt, surrounded by the coffins of his four wives. His grandson the Duke of Reichstad, aka Napoléon II, was also buried there until he was transferred to Paris in 1940.
In the adjacent New Crypt is the coffin of Empress Marie-Louise of the French (fifth photo), the faithless second consort of Napoléon I and mother of Napoléon II. Just across from her is her unfortunate nephew Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, who was executed in 1867 (sixth photo).
Visitors tend to be drawn to the Franz Joseph Crypt (second photo), where several floral tributes are normally to be found at the sarcophagi of Emperor Franz Joseph I, whose 68-year-reign spanned the times from Metternich to World War I, the restless Empress Elisabeth, who was assassinated in 1898, and Crown Prince Rudolph, who committed suicide at Mayerling in 1889.
Burials in the Imperial Vault did not cease altogether with the fall of the Astro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 (Archduke Karl, the current head of the house, actually proposed to his wife during a visit to the vault, asking her how she would like one day to be buried there!).
While the last Emperor, Karl I, is still buried where he died in 1922, his widow Zita was taken to Vienna and buried in the Imperial Vault when she died in the momentous year 1989. Her coffin is to be found in the Crypt Chapel, where her son Otto, the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, will be laid to rest by her side on Saturday, nearly 95 years after he walked between his parents in the funeral procession of his great-great-uncle Franz Joseph in November 1916.
Perhaps this will be the last time that the ceremony of three knocks on the door to the vault will be carried out. This was how it was done for ex-Empress Zita in 1989:
At the first knock at the door, the Capuchin custodian would ask: “Who requests entry?” The master of ceremonies would announce: “Her Majesty Zita, by the Grace of God Empress of Austria, crowned Queen of Hungary, Queen of Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria, Queen of Jerusalem etc., Archduchess of Austria, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Cracow, Lady of Lorraine and Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Krajina and Bukowina, Grand Duchess of Transylvania, Margravine of Moravia, Duchess of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, of Auschwitz and Zator, of Teschen, Friaul, Ragusa and Zara, knighted Countess of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Görz and Gradiska, Lady of Trent and Brixen, Margravine of Upper and Lower Lausitz and in Istria, Lady of Hohenembs, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenberg etc., Countess of Trieste, of Catarro and on the Windish March, Great Voyvod and Voyvodship of Serbia etc., etc.”. “We know her not”, the custodian would reply.
A second knock. “Who requests entry?” “Zita, Her Majesty the Empress and Queen”. “We know her not”.
A third knock. “Who requests entry?” the custodian would call again and the master of ceremonies would reply: “Zita, a mortal, sinful human being”. “So come here in”, the Capuchin would say and open the gate.

Royal jewels: Empress Eugénie’s crown

The regalia used for Emperor Napoléon I’s and Empress Joséphine’s spectacular coronation in 1804 were nearly all destroyed following the downfall of the First Empire and the restoration of the Bourbons. Despite reintroducing the Empire in 1852, Napoléon III never got around to be crowned, but for the Universal Exhibition which was held in Paris in 1855 he ordered crowns to be made for himself and Empress Eugénie.
The Emperor’s crown, which judged by its representation in contemporary paintings had a similar form, has since been lost, while the Empress’s crown is to my knowledge the only preserved crown of a French consort.
Executed by the imperial court jeweler Alexandre-Gabriel Lemonnier, assisted by J.-P. Maheu, Auguste Fannière and Joseph Fannière, it is made of gold adorned with 2,490 diamonds (1,354 brilliant-cut and 1,1136 rose-cut diamonds) and 56 emeralds. The small crown, which is 12.5 centimetres high and has a diameter of fifteen centimetres, was based on the crowns featured in the arms of the First as well as the Second Empire. The most obvious symbolism is the eight imperial eagles situated between the crown’s arches.
As she was not crowned, Empress Eugénie apparently never actually wore the crown, but it was used ceremonially and also appeared in paintings, such as Franz Xavier Winterhalter’s famous state portrait of the Empress (detail above).
While a large amount of the Crown Diamonds was used for the Emperor’s crown, only a few were used for the Empress’s crown. Thus the crown was apparently deemed private property and following the downfall of the Second Empire in 1870 it was restored to the widowed ex-Empress by the French Republic.
The ex-Empress outlived the Empire for no less than fifty years, dying in Madrid in 1920, aged 94. I believe the crown was inherited by her goddaughter, Countess Louise-Eugénie von Moltke-Huitfeldt, née Patterson-Bonaparte, whose descendants later sold it.
The crown was presented to the Louvre by Mr and Mrs Roberto Polo in 1988 and is now exhibited in the Apollo Gallery.

Imperial commemoration of Napoléon I

Last Friday (5 May) was the 190th anniversary of the death of Emperor Napoléon I of the French. The ex-Emperor died in exile at St Helena in the evening of 5 May 1821, but in 1840 his remains were brought back to France and eventually laid to rest under the dome of the Invalides.
On the anniversary there was as usual a service held in the adjacent Church of St Louis, preceded by a wreath-laying ceremony at the imperial tomb. The ceremonies were attended by among others the head of the former imperial house, Jean-Christophe, the Prince Napoléon, and his grandmother, Alix, the Princess Napoléon. This year they were saluted by a guard of honour in uniforms from the Napoleonic age.
In addition to the wreath from the Prince Napoléon there were wreaths from the Fondation Napoléon and Souvenir Napoléonien, as well as one from Ajaccio, the Corsican town where Napoléon was born in 1769.

Britain proposes St Helena for UNESCO World Heritage List

St Helena, the remote South Atlantic island where ex-Emperor Napoléon I died in exile in 1821, is among the eleven sites the British government yesterday nominated for UNESCO World Heritage status, the Guardian reports.
The World Heritage list currently consists of 911 sites in 151 countries. St Helena, which even today is one of the remotest and least accessible places on earth, might be a natural addition by being immortalised as the place where the perhaps most famous man in history was sent to die after the final downfall of his once mighty empire.
The other British nominees are the Forth bridge, Gorham’s gave complex in Gibraltar, the Turks and Caicos islands, the Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheschire, the Lake District, Cresswell Crags, the slate industry in north Wales, Flow Country in Scotland and Down House in Kent, the home of Charles Darwin, where he wrote The Origin of Species.
Decisions about which places will be added to the UNESCO World Heritage List will be made at the meeting of the world heritage committee in June, which was due to be held in Bahrain, but has now been moved to Paris.
(The image of St Helena seen from space is by NASA).

On this date: Birth of Napoléon II 200 years ago

200 years ago today, in the morning of 20 March 1811, Paris reverberated with 101 gunshots announcing the birth of the longed-for heir to the imperial throne. In 1809 Emperor Napoléon I had divorced Empress Joséphine as she was unable to give him the heir he felt the Empire needed in order to survive him and in her place he had taken as his wife Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria. The birth of their first child nearly a year after the wedding was however complicated and the infant remained their only child.
Born at 8.20 a.m. at the Tuileries Palace, the Prince Imperial was given the names Napoléon François Joseph Charles and the title King of Rome. He was christened in Notre-Dame on 9 June 1811.
The birth of the heir might in hindsight be considered the high point of the First Empire. The decline began already the following year with the disastrous Russian campaign and in April 1814 Napoléon I was forced to abdicate and go into exile. Empress Marie-Louise fled to Vienna, taking her son with her, and the former Emperor never saw his wife or his son again.
At the end of his second reign, the so-called Hundred Days, Napoléon I abdicated on 22 June 1815 in favour of his son, who then became Emperor Napoléon II. But he remained in Vienna and his short reign came to an end on 7 July, when the fugitive Louis XVIII was again proclaimed King of France.
The former Napoléon II was renamed Franz and given the title Duke of Reichstadt by his maternal grandfather, Emperor Franz I of Austria. He lived out the remainder of his life at the Austrian court, where he was kept under surveillance and generally encouraged to forget everything about his French past, which he refused to do.
The Duke of Reichstadt died from tuberculosis at Schönbrunn Palace on 22 July 1832, aged only 21. In December 1940 his mortal remains were, on the orders of Adolf Hitler, brought to Paris and interred in the crypt where his father had been laid to rest after his remains were brought back from St Helena a hundred years earlier.
The portrait of the King of Rome wearing the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour was commissioned in 1812 from François Gérard by Empress Marie-Louise, who had it sent to her husband in Russia. It arrived on the eve of the Battle of Moskowa and the Emperor had it put on display outside his tent to inspire his troops. Today it is to be found in the Musée Napoléon Ier at Fontainebleau Palace.

Several exhibitions on royal history this autumn

I have just returned from Stockholm, where the National Museum was busy getting everything in place for their grand exhibition “Härskarkonst – Napoleon, Karl Johan, Alexander” (“Staging Power – Napoleon, Karl Johan, Alexander”), which will be opened by King Carl Gustaf tomorrow in the presence of former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
The exhibition is expected to be the highlight of the Bernadotte bicentenary and will look at Emperor Napoléon I of France’s, King Carl XIV Johan of Sweden and Norway’s and Emperor Alexander I of Russia’s relations to art and how they used the arts to strengthen their own positions. More than 400 works of art – paintings, costumes, jewellery, furniture and more – are included in this exhibition.
Some examples worth mentioning are Jacques-Louis David’s iconic painting of Napoléon crossing the Alps, a leaf from the golden wreath with which Napoléon crowned himself emperor and the magnificent emerald necklace which was given to Stéphanie de Beauharnais when she married the future Grand Duke of Baden in 1805.
A richly illustrated catalogue, in Swedish and English versions, is available from the National Museum from this week. The exhibition will last until 23 January and will thereafter be shown in a modified version at the State Hermitage in St Petersburg.
The National Museum’s exhibition of Bernadotte portraits, “Bernadotter i svart och vitt” (“The Bernadottes in Black and White”), which opened in June, also remains open until 23 January, but on the coming Sunday some of the exhibited photos will be replaced with others (for preservation reasons).
It was earlier reported that the Royal Collection would show an exhibition on Carl XIV Johan’s family life at the Royal Palace in Stockholm from 1 October, but this has been postponed to 2 December.
There will however be several other exhibitions related to royal history to be seen this autumn. The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace has just extended their magnificent “Victoria & Albert: Art & Love”, which was due to close on 31 October, to 5 December.
As earlier mentioned the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Palace in Copenhagen will stage an exhibition to mark the 350th anniversary of the introduction of absolute monarchy in Denmark-Norway, while Rosenborg Palace in Copenhagen will hold the exhibition “Pomp og pragt - Kongemagt og enevælde” (“Pomp and Splendour - Royal Power and Absolute Monarchy”) on the same topic. The exhibition at Frederiksborg will run from 16 October to 20 February, while Rosenborg’s lasts from 16 October to 27 February.
A book related to these two exhibitions has also just been published by Gads Forlag of Copenhagen. Magt og pragt – Enevælde 1660-1848 is written by the noted historians Thomas Lyngby, Søren Mentz and Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen.
On the coming Saturday the Amalienborg Museum in Copenhagen will inaugurate their new exhibition “Den elegante fornyer” (“The Elegant Reformer”), which is a belated commemoration of the centenary of Queen Ingrid’s birth in March. This exhibition will close on the late Queen’s birthday, 28 March 2011. The Danish Royal Collection has by the way just got a new website (external link), which is a significant improvement on the old one.
In Antwerp one will soon be able to see the exhibition “Voor eer en glorie - Napoleon en de juwelen van het Keizerrijk” (“For Honour and Glory - Napoleon and the Empire’s Jewels”) at the Diamond Museum in Queen Astrid Square. This exhibition on the jewellery of the Napoleonic age will be open from 1 October to 31 December.
Here in Oslo the exhibition “Slottet og Linstow – Den nye hovedstadens grunnstein” (“The Palace and Linstow – The Cornerstone of the New Capital”) at the National Museum’s architecture department is now in its closing days. The exhibition, which is the first since 1922 to be devoted to Hans D. F. Linstow, the city planner and architect of the Royal Palace, will close on 10 October.
Meanwhile another branch of the National Museum, the National Gallery, last week opened “Sakrale skatter fra Kreml-museene i Moskva” (“Sacral Treasures from the Kremlin Museums in Moscow”), which shows some 90 icons, textiles and ritual and liturgical objects used in the imperial cathedrals of Russia. This is said to be the most valuable exhibition ever held at the National Museum. It will stay open until 16 January.
The photo show Grand Duchess Stéphanie Napoléon’s emerald necklace, which is normally kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The press photo is copyright the Victoria and Albert Museum.

An interesting article on the cameo diadem

In a recent issue of the French magazine Point de Vue (no 3231, dated 23-29 June) there is an article by the jewellery expert Vincent Meylan on the cameo diadem which Crown Princess Victoria wore on her wedding day which adds some very interesting details about the history of this beautiful tiara.
As previously mentioned an oral tradition in the Bernadotte family maintains that the tiara, which sits in a box labelled Nitot, first belonged to Empress Joséphine of the French, yet the first known depiction of it shows it not on the Empress, but worn by her daughter Queen Hortense of Holland.
The portrait was done by Anne-Louis Girodet in 1812 and miniatures based on it have been up for sale at Dorotheum in Vienna in 2007 (external link) and at Sotheby’s in London last June (external link). The article says that a miniature is now in the Swedish royal collection, but this is probably wrong as the King of Sweden as far as I know did not buy any of the two.
The question is anyway how the tiara found its way from Queen Hortense to her niece Josephina, who was portrayed wearing it shortly after she became Crown Princess of Sweden and Norway in 1823.
Based on research in the Napoléon archives in Paris, Meylan states that Queen Hortense sold a cameo tiara in 1824 for 30,000 francs, but that tiara was made of cameos and rubies rather than cameos and pearls.
However, Meylan writes that a tiara of cameos and pearls was among Empress Joséphine’s possessions at the time of her death in 1814 and that this tiara went to her son, Prince Eugène, when he and Queen Hortense divided their mother’s estate. He explains the fact that Queen Hortense was painted wearing the tiara during her mother’s lifetime by pointing out that mother and daughter had the habit of borrowing each other’s jewels.
This would explain the fact that it belonged to the future Queen Josephina several years before the death of Queen Hortense and establishes the following list of owners: Empress Joséphine – Prince Eugène – Queen Josephina – Princess Eugénie – Prince Eugen – Princess Sibylla – King Carl XVI Gustaf.
The photo is a detail of an old postcard showing the then Princess Ingrid (later Queen of Denmark) wearing the cameo diadem when she dressed as her great-great-grandmother Queen Josephina for a charity masquerade in 1933.

Bernadotte bicentenary exhibition

As I wrote about in April, there will be many events to celebrate the Bernadottes’ 200 years in Sweden next year, among them an exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm. The exhibition is entitled “Härskarkonst”, which may be translated both as “Art of Ruling” and “Rulers’ Art”.
It will deal with King Carl XIV Johan of Sweden and Norway, Emperor Napoléon I of the French and Emperor Aleksandr I of Russia and include some 400 works by Jacques-Louis David, François Gérard and other masters. Among the themes covered are “Visual manifestations of power”, “Great politics and dynastic family ties” and “Art collecting”, according to the museum’s website:
http://www.nationalmuseum.se/sv/Besoka-museet/Utstallningar1/Kommande1/Harskarkonst/
The exhibition will open at the National Museum in the autumn of 2010 and be shown until January 2011. From Stockholm it will continue to the Hermitage in St Petersburg. Shortly after the exhibition leaves the Swedish capital, the National Museum of Fine Arts will close down for renovation and be closed for an almost incomprehensible seven (!) years.
The picture shows a detail of David’s painting of the ceremony in 1804 when the newly proclaimed Emperor Napoléon presented the imperial eagles to his army. Carl Johan, or Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte as he then was, turns away. The painting hangs at Versailles Palace.

What to see: The former royal palace Villa Pisani, Stra

A little-known but splendid former royal palace can be found in the small town of Stra, a few kilometres outside Padua on the road to Venice. Villa Pisani was built to glorify the noble Venetian family Pisani and is situated at the bend of the Brenta Canal. There the Pisani family already owned a villa known as Santo Stefano, a simple building from the late 16th century which was demolished in 1720 to make way for a new house.
The task of building the new villa was first given to the architect Girolamo Frigimelica Roberti (1653-1732), but his plans were soon shelved. Following his death the commission was given to Francesco Maria Preti (1701-1774), who completed the work on Villa Pisani in 1756.
In 1735 Alvise Pisani had been elected the 114th Doge of the Republic of Venice and it is said that this was the reason why the villa originally had 114 rooms – today the number is officially given as 168. There are two inner courtyards, separated by the colonnade seen in the last picture. Currently the colonnade houses a sculpture by Mimmo Paladino, which is part of the exhibition “I classici del contemporaneo”, which is on until 30 September.
At the centre of the building is the most magnificent of the rooms – the Ballroom, seen in the fifth photo. The fresco, “The Glory of the Pisani Family”, was done by Giambattista Tiepolo in 1761-1762 and took him only 76 working days. The walls are decorated in trompe l’oeil technique by Pietro Visconti.
The villa itself is Palladian in style, marked by the emerging neoclassicism, but there are also still traces of Baroque. The main façade towards the canal, seen in the first and second pictures, is richly decorated, while the garden façade, seen in the third photo, is simpler. Opposite the villa is the building for the stables, itself a magnificent creation which also served as open-air banqueting hall and now also as an orangery. The Long Pond between them was built in the 20th century.
Following the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797, the Pisani family found themselves in financial difficulties and on 11 January 1807 its then owner, Ermoloa “Alvise” Pisani, sold the villa to Napoléon I. The French Emperor also being King of Italy, this made Villa Pisani one of the two royal palaces in the Veneto region, the other being the Royal Palace in Venice (now the Correr Museum).
Napoléon himself spent only two nights at the palace – those of 28 November and 13 December 1807, on his way to and from his only visit to Venice. Ten years earlier he had stopped briefly at the villa during the campaign in Italy, commenting on Tiepolo’s masterpiece that it was a pity it was a fresco, “if it had been on canvas it would have looked superb at Fontainebleau!”
The Emperor-King gave the right of disposal to his adopted son Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy and Prince of Venice, who hired the architects Giovannia Antonio Antolini, Giuseppe Mezzani and Giuseppe Maria Soli to modernise the palace. Rebuilding, including the creation of imperial and viceregal apartments in Empire style, lasted for several years, which means that Napoléon never actually slept in the so-called “Napoleonic bed” which is now in his bedchamber.
The sixth photo shows one of the redecorated rooms – the Dining Room, which was redecorated in Pompeian style by G. Borsato and Pietro Moro in 1808-1814. The seventh picture is of a pre-imperial room, the Salon of the View-Paintings, which also holds a model of the famous maze which can be found in the palace’s park.
Following the downfall of Napoléon’s empire, Villa Pisani passed to the Habsburgs. It was a favourite residence of Empress Maria Anna, consort of the unfortunate Emperor Ferdinand. The Savoys, who took over in 1866, soon lost interest in the palace. It was abandoned in 1874 and after unsuccessful attempts at renting it out, management was entrusted to the Regional Office for Monuments in the Veneto in 1882.
Although named a national museum, Villa Pisani came to house offices and institutions of various kinds and the palace fell into disrepair. In 1934 Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler held their first meeting there. It is only in recent decades that interest in this glorious building has been revived. Still much of the furniture can be found in other places, such as the Correr Museum in Venice and the Quirinal Palace in Rome, but since the mid-1980s extensive renovation work has been carried out.
The official website:
http://www.villapisani.beniculturali.it/en/index.php