Marie, Countess Walewski
Marie, Countess Walewski (or Walewska) born Łączyńska (1786 - 1817) polish countess, wife of
Count Athenasius Walewski,
mistress of
Napoleon I Bonaparte and mother of
Alexandre Joseph Colonna, Count Walewski. Her parents were Count Mathieu Laczynski and Eva Zaborowska.
At the age of eighteen, Marie Laczinska married Count Athenasius Walewski, her senior by several years, by whom she had a son in 1805. Two years later, in January of 1807, she became acquainted with the
emperor of the
French.
She related the meeting in her diary: "Napoleon raised his hat, bent toward me, I don't know what he said to me then because I was too eager to express what I was feeling. Be welcome, a thousand times welcome to our country. Nothing that we could do would express strongly enough either our admiration for you personally or the pleasure we have in seeing you set foot on the land which expects you to reestablish it.... Napoleon looked at me closely and took a bouquet which happened to be in the carriage, and as he gave it to me he said, 'Keep it as a pledge of my good intentions; I hope that we shall see each other in Warsaw and that I shall receive a thank-you from your beautiful mouth.'".
The emperor noticed her again at one of those sumptuous affairs given by the Polish
nobility. He did not stop seeing her. Twenty two years old, Marie Walewska, blue-eyed and blond, aroused passions. Patriotic friends of the countess tried to push her into becoming his
mistress, which at first she refused to do, but although still married she finally yielded in the hope of inducing the emperor to treat Poland equitably. "Her character enchanted the emperor and made him cherish her more every day", relates Constant Wairy.
Their affair was passionate. During this time
Joséphine kicked up her heels in
Mainz. The idyll was interrupted when Napoleon took command of his army for the Campaign of Eylau. In May of 1810 Marie gave Napoleon a son,
Alexandre Walewski.
After the
Battle of Nations and the first abdication, Marie and Alexandre made a discreet trip to
Elba to comfort the disgraced emperor. A rumor had it that the visit was by
Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria and the king of
Rome.
Her first husband had died by this time, and in September of
1816 she married a
first cousin of Napoleon I, Count
Philippe Antoine d'Ornano. She died in labor, in 1817. Her heart was placed in the crypt of the d'Ornano family in
Père Lachaise in
Paris and her body returned to
Poland.
*http://www.histofig.com/history/empire/personnes/pologne_walewska_en.html
*http://www.napoleonicsociety.com/english/CountessWalewska.htm
