In the Shadow of the Empress by Nancy Goldstone

Author:Nancy Goldstone [GOLDSTONE, NANCY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2021-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

Footnotes

1 Poor Marianne and Maria Elisabeth! It was no fun being stay-at-home abbesses. The English traveler observed that “they lead a gloomy, tedious life… Immured in the Imperial Palace, almost destitute of society, obliged to attend their mother wherever she moves, and compelled to assist at ceremonies or exercises of devotion, as if they were nuns [which technically they were], rather than Princesses; scarcely are they known to exist by any of the foreign nations of Europe, and never were any persons less objects of envy.”

2 Frederick, not being pious himself—in fact, he sneered at piety—was noted for his tolerance of all faiths, including Judaism, and so was commended as enlightened. In Prussia, the king did not bother his subjects about their beliefs so long as they paid their taxes and followed his orders.

3 The same Englishwoman who had swooned over the opera house in Naples described the theater of Parma as having “a parcel of old brown planks ill joined together, and much damaged by smoke and damp,” making up a ceiling and a stage “so ill-floored that you cannot easily walk over it without tumbling.” Owing to the modest income provided to its duke, the château of Parma (“unworthy of observation,” the visiting Englishwoman sniffed) was in a similar state of decay. Although originally famous for its “vast collection… of bronzes, pictures, medals, and a library of books,” by the time of Maria Amalia’s arrival, these treasures had all been shipped to Naples on Don Carlos’s orders and now adorned Maria Carolina’s palace.

4 Maria Amalia, angry and hurt, reciprocated her mother’s animosity, so much so that when her first daughter was born, in 1770, the duchess of Parma defied tradition and alone among her siblings refused to name the child Maria Theresa, christening her Maria Carolina instead.

5 This episode was later immortalized in a poem: “The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour, / Tries the dread summit of Cæsarean power; / With unexpected legions bursts away, / And sees defenseless realms accept his sway. / Short sway! Fair Austria spreads her mournful charms, / The Queen, the Beauty, sets the world in arms.”

6 Saxony, having experienced Prussian occupation once, had no desire to risk further hostilities with Frederick and so sided with him this time. “No advantages which the court of Vienna can hold out or offer to Saxony, will ever compensate for the misfortunes almost necessarily resulting from a rupture with Prussia,” the English traveler explained. “This is a truth of which the present wise Elector, instructed by his grandfather’s experience and calamities, seems to have the fullest conviction.”

7 Joseph was so clearly unsuited to the military that his mother could not help but compare him to her former commanders. “That,” she added wearily in her letter to Mercy, “restores the credit of Charles [of Lorraine].” You know you are in trouble when Charles of Lorraine seems the more competent option.

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