TRAGEDY OF AN EX-EMPRESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 172, 22 July 1922, Page 11

TRAGEDY OF AN EX-EMPRESS.

MAXIMILIAN'S WIDOW. Shut up or. her splendid estate In Xorth Belgium is the ex-Empress Charlotte of Mexico, who completed her eighty-second year recently. Although in reasonably good health, she is, says the Brussels correspondent of the "Central News," mentally irresponsible, her mind having been unhinged as the result of the terrible experiences through which she went as a young wife. Soon after her marriage to the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand she went out to Mexico with her husband, who, with the inadequate troops placed under his orders by the French Government of the day, was unable to quell a rising which the French had undertaken to put down. After a brief reign as Emperor of Mexico under the name of Maximilian, he was finally taken prisoner by the rebels and shot. That tragedy broke the mind of his charming young wife, who #ad none the less been over to Europe in the meantime to plead for reinforcements on his behalf. Her brother, the late King Leopold 11.. immediately took her um'er his care, providing her with a magnificent castle and grounds and a suite tilted to her royal rank. This appanage has been kept up by the present King of the Belgians, who shows a tender solicitude for the welfare of his aunt, lie pays her frequent visits and sees that she lacks nothing to render her closing years free from care. Princess Charlotte-—that is her Belgian title—was perhaps the only person in Belgium who knew no?hin" of the war. As the widow of an Austrian Archduke her estate was respected by the Germans when they invaded Belgium; acting doubtless under instructions, her entourage kept silence on the stirring political and military events that followed the upheaval of 1914. To-day the Princess is virtually _. recluse, .renerally reported to be kind and indulgent ft> these about her, leadin" the life of an old lady of leisure, walking and dnvine about her grounds, doing a little reading and a little embroidery, and chatting [quite reasonably with her ladies-it- ; -wa nins. Her mind is, however, a blank with regard to her early married life, on which, moreover, those about her never open their lips.