Leipzig 1813

Marshal Marmont: Meditations on Möckern and Morality

Ironically, shortly after his exile from Paris after his second betrayal, his move to Vienna led to his appointment as the personal tutor of the son of Napoleon and his second wife, the Empress Marie-Louise. Sometimes known as Napoleon II for his painfully brief stints as Emperor as a toddler after his father had abdicated two different times, the young Napoleon lived under a form of house arrest at the Hapsburg court as the Duke of Reichstadt, a title given to him by his grandfather, the Austrian Emperor Francis II, the father of Marie-Louise. Marmont taught his charge the Napoleonic legend, and by all accounts, the Duke of Reichstadt was a Francophile and great admirer of his father. Marmont provided the perspective unavailable to L'Aiglet in his Hapsburg prison that was the Austrian court. Marmont's Napoleonic lessons were short -lived as Napoleon II died in 1832, allegedly of tuberculosis. Rumors of his poisoning still persist. Marmont's chance at a rehabilitation eroded like sandcastles at high tide---thus condemning him to his historic reputation as a betrayer of Napoleon; the Bourbons; and most of all, France. Marmont was a well-educated man who wrote several volumes of military history; reviews of his many travels; and his memoirs. However, the strong story of his betrayal has outlived all his well-written tomes. The Duke of Ragusa is forever remembered as the man who left as his legacy the French verb raguser, which means to betray . Even as Zola wrote J'accuse, Marmont has said to France and to history, Je raguse.

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