Napoleon II

Napoleon II, 1811–32, son of Napoleon I and Marie Louise, known as the king of Rome (1811–14), as the prince of Parma (1814–18), and after that as the duke of Reichstadt. Napoleon's abdication in 1815 was in favor of his son, so that he was known to the Bonapartists as Napoleon II, although he never ruled. After 1815 he was a virtual prisoner in Austria, where he died of tuberculosis. In 1940 his remains were transferred, as a gift to France from Adolf Hitler, from Vienna to the dome of the Invalides in Paris, where he now rests beside his father. The pitiful life of the “Eaglet” is the subject of Edmond Rostand's drama L'Aiglon.

See biography by A. Castelot (tr. 1960).

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