MARIA LACZYNSKA - WALEWSKA : MARRIED POLISH MISTRESS OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE FROM 1806 TO 1810

MARIA LACZYNSKA - WALEWSKA

1786 - 1817

When you hear of legendary lovers, you hear "Napoleon and Josephine."  However, Josephine (Marie Josephe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie) was the history making military leader Napoleon's first wife whom he married in 1796, but divorced.  Possibly this was because she had not become pregnant with him, though she had children in her first marriage. When married, both Napoleon and Josephine had affairs and he had children with mistresses. Her affairs were blamed or tolerated because he was gone so much on his military campaigns. The widowed mother of a son by her first husband, Josephine was the sentimental favorite but discarded wife. Perhaps the idea that she was his true love also comes from the rumor that her name was upon his lips when he died.

While Napoleon considered Maria to be his "Polish wife," he left Josephine behind and sought his next wife, Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria, whom he married on March 11, 1810 by proxy: He was not actually there and had a stand in. Marie Louise was nineteen at the time.  This marriage raised Napoleon's status further because Marie Louise was also a great-niece of Marie Antoinette, the Queen. Napoleon, born in 1769, would remain married to this second wife for the rest of his life, till 1821. 

Marie Laczynska - Walewska, our Mistress of the Month, came from a noble Polish background. She was married to a nobleman, Anastase Colonna Walewski, a noble of of Italian and Polish heritage, when she was either sixteen and a half or seventeen and a half. He was about fifty years her senior and was a widower who had grandchildren older than Marie. Her mother was delighted when the teenager who Marie liked went away into the military and this old neighbor came calling. Old Walewska began his pursuit by throwing her a party to celebrate her completion of what was a finishing school for noble young women, a kind of debut. Marie was persuaded to marry him to do right by her family, whose fortunes were of concern after her father died. Although she took to being the lady of a beautiful palace, the marriage left much to desire.

Although the relationship between Maria and Napoleon was well known, even decades later when their son rose to prominence in France himself, and people mentioned how much he looked like his father, he would say how much he looked like Anastase Colonna-Walewska.  Their son was named Alexandre Joseph Colonna- Walewski.

Marie was already the mother of a son, about a year and a half years old, when she took up with Napoleon.  She divorced Anastase Colinna-Walweska in 1812. after having been Naoleon's mistress.  Her relationship with Napoleon was intense but in it she also experienced long periods of time when he was away.  In 1816 she married Phillipe Antoine d'Ornano, and her third son with him, named Rodolphe d'Ornano.

Now, according to the book by Christine Sutherland, which is the primary reference for this month's posts, Marie Laczynska was one of seven children and a beauty.  It feel upon her to rescue her family financially by marrying old Anastase Colinna Walewski.

When she was eight, her father was killed in a ferocious battle in Praga with the Russians that left 12,000 people (including civilians) dead. Of a noble family, her father's death left her mother to send the sons to private schools for good educations and the daughters to what we could call 'finishing schools" so they would be ready to assume the role of an elite wife.  Her mother hoped that the marriage she contracted for her daughter would preserve and replenish the Laczynska estates.

One description of her went like this. ...  (Madame Laczynska) had a very beautiful teenage daughter, Marie, with incredibly large blue eyes, blonde hair which she wore down to her waist, and a particularly sweet expression on her face.  She made me think of an angel or a wood nymph." (Page 23)

Soon after she turned fourteen, Marie was sent to the Convent of Our Lady of the Assumption in Warsaw, to finish her education.  Not far from the Vistula river, a royal palace had been built by King Sigismund III.  She returned home at sixteen in 1803, with high recommendations about her personality and character.  But it was her beauty was most remarked upon in society.  Besides her thick curly hair worn to the waist, her teeth were even and white, her skin very light white, her eyes cornflower blue, her lashes long.

At the time, a marriage that would benefit the whole family was a more important consideration than the wishes of individuals.  Anastase had been the Chamberlan to the last King of Poland and owned a castle called Walewice. He was the biggest landowner in the province. He was too old to fight, and though he had accomplished much in his lifetime, he retired.  So, he arranged a party in her honor upon her return from school.

It took Marie some time to adjust to her marriage but she had a son with Anastase. Living in luxury, and part of elite social circles that believe Napoleon's military leadership would serve Poland, she had every reason to put the hero in her sights. But when it came time to actually meet him, she asked her husband if they could skip the event.  He insisted that they go and that she be well dressed and bejeweled.  At first Anastase's ego was burnished when Napoleon took an interest in his wife, then he had no choice but to let her to to the man...

One of the most interesting aspects of the relationship of Maria and Napoleon for me is that this military leader strategically lead battles that resulted millions of deaths.  According to Wikipedia, Civilian deaths are impossible to accurately estimate.  While military deaths are invariably put at between 2.5 million and 3.5 million, civilian death tolls vary from 750,000 to 3 million. Yet he seems to have been able to also compartmentalize his personal life, enjoying gossip with Marie and entertaining a romantic correspondence. Yet, there were many times when he had to have left their bed to gather the troops and she might have always wondered if he would return alive.

Marie did divorce the old husband she had married so young and did remarry but not to Napoleon.  There is reason to believe that Napaleon was the love of her life but she married a cousin of his.  In 1815 Anastase Walewski died.  Napoleon fled Naples.  Maria went back to Paris with their son.  She married Ornano in early September 1816 and was soon pregnant. In January 1817 she arrived back at Walewice, Poland and there was found to be seriously ill with kidney disease. She had been warned in her previous two pregnancies not to breast feed because of this kidney problem but had anyway.  Now her health was precarious.  She gave birth in Liege in 1817 to Rodolphe Auguste Ornano, her third son.  She died at thirty one, in December of 1817. Still a young woman by today's standards, childbirth took it's toll on women.

Maria Laczynska was well regarded for her modest character, for no matter what riches she was exposed to, she would remain so.  Napoleon told others he loved Marie, all the while searching for his next marriage, which he wanted to be a dynastic one.  While she was pregnant with his child, which pleased Napoleon, while she lived with him in Austria at the Shonbrunn lavish estates, and when it was time to leave Austria, Maria proceeded to France without Napoleon, in order to give birth there.  Napoleon was getting around to divorcing Josephine and Maria's husband was probably not aware that she was pregnant.

According to the book by Christine Sutherland, in her land will Marie said that she wanted her heart to remain in France, where she had traveled to live as Napoleon's mistress, and her body was to be buried in Poland in her family graveyard.  And so an urn with her heart in it remains in the famous Pere Lachaise graveyard in Paris in the Ornano family vaults.  It says "Marie Laczynska, Comtesse d' Ornano.  As the mother of three sons with three different fathers, Marie left her two oldest son's in the care of her brother.

This month I will tell the story based on Sutherland's book and some additional research I've done. I will not detail Napoleon's military failures and successes but the relationship between him and this young Polish beauty.

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