KING OF ROME

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 14, 11 October 1932, Page 6

KING OF ROME

Napoleon’s Son’s Death CENTENARY CELEBRATED The centenary of the death Of the King of Rome, the son of Napoleon I, who was subsequently called the Duke of Reichstadt, was celebrated at Vienna on July 22. The young prince, who died of tuberculosis at Schoenbrunn Castle, was laid, to rest in the Capuchiue vault on July 24 in the presence of all the members of the Imperial familj excepting those two standing nearest to him, his grandfather, the Emperor Francis, and his mother, Marie Louise, Napoleon’s widow, who, it will be remembered, married her former “cavalier d’honneur,” Count Adam Neipperg, a short time after Napoleon’s death. Marie Louise, who never showed much affection for the Duke of Reichstadt, bad left for Persenbeug Castle on the morning of the funeral to join her father, the Emperor, there. The sacophagus containing the remains of the duke bears the following inscription in Latin: “To the perpetual memory of Joseph Charles Francis, Duke of Reichstadt, son of Napoleon, the Emperor of the French, and the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria. Born at Paris on March 20, ISII, greeted iu the cradle with the title of King of Rome, endowed with all preferences of mind and body in the vigour of manhood, with brilliant figure, noble youth in the face, with rare grace of language, distinguished by military knowledge and ambition, seized by pulmonary consumption, succumbed to a painful death in the Imperial castle at Schoenbrunn, near Vienna, on July 22, .1832.”