Marriage to Marie Louise

Once the divorce was pronounced, a wife was needed who could give both an heir and an alliance. Two matches were examined at the council of January 1810: Grand Duchess Anna, sister of Alexander I, and Archduchess Marie Louise, daughter of Francis I. Saint Petersburg delayed its answer; Metternich seized the chance to anchor a defeated Austria. The contract was signed in February and the marriage by proxy celebrated in Vienna on 11 March, Archduke Charles standing in for the groom.

Napoleon did not respect the protocol of welcome: he intercepted the procession in the rain at Courcelles, near Compiègne, and did not wait for the ceremony. The civil marriage took place at Saint-Cloud on 1 April, the religious one the next day in the Salon Carré of the Louvre turned into a chapel, at the end of a procession through the Tuileries.

Thirteen cardinals refused to attend, holding the annulment of the marriage to Joséphine invalid: they were stripped of their insignia — hence the name "black cardinals" — and exiled to the provinces.

The marriage gave the Empire what the coronation could not: entry into the family of the old dynasties. Napoleon believed in it — he spoke of "a womb" and knew he had become Marie-Antoinette's nephew by marriage.

But revolutionary opinion saw a renunciation, Russia a rupture, and Austria a mere respite. In 1813 Francis I declared war on his son-in-law; in 1814 Marie Louise, held in Vienna, never joined him on Elba.