Identifier: womenbonapartesm02will (find matches)
Title: The women Bonapartes: the mother and three sisters of Napoléon I
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Williams, H. Noel (Hugh Noel), 1870-1925
Subjects: Bonaparte family Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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tted his sore-strickentroops, at Smorgoni, on the 5th, arrived in Paris,and presently the full extent of the most appallingdisaster in all the annals of modern warfare wasrevealed to a horrified country. The first actof the tragedy which Madame had foreseen, evenwhen cannon was thundering and bells pealingin honour of Napoleons victories in Austria,Prussia, and Poland, had been played ; the secondand third were to have for their theatre theSaxon plains; the last, France itself. It was now that the great qualities of thewoman began to reveal themselves once more—that indomitable spirit, that indefatigable energy,that clearness of judgment, which had carried herand her children through the trials of her marriedlife and early years of widowhood, through theperils of her escape from Corsica, through theprivations of her first months in France. Duringthe years of prosperity, these qualities had laindormant, and many of those about her had seenin her character little save that which moved
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MAkIA LKTIZIA BONAPARTt, -MADAME M^RE FROM THE PAINTING BV GERARD AT VERSAILLES THE WOMEN BONAPARTES 253 them to amusement and even to contempt: herparsimony, her vindictiveness towards those whooffended her, her persistent blindness to the faultsof her children, her foolish pretensions to titlesand honours which the Emperor could notpossibly have accorded without exposing bothher and himself to well-merited ridicule. Butnow that adversity was at hand, they were toshine forth again, and to burn with undiminishedbrightness until the end. For, at bottom, Mada7ne was still the womanof 93. The lust of domination had turnedNapoleons head; vanity, luxury, or misplacedambition had corrupted his brothers and sisters.But his mother was unchanoed : the Corsicanmatron still, shrewd, tenacious, loyal, devoted. She was quick to recognise that it was shealone who could hope to appease the discords inthe Imperial Family, and rally her children to thesupport of the Emperors crumbling throne ; and,tho

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