It seems as though Hell had been let loose on this great man and his family.  The crowned heads of Europe and the plutocrats stopped at nothing in order that they might make his ruin complete.  They dare not run the risk of putting him to death outright, but they engineered, by means of willing tools, a plan that was unheard-of in its atrocious character.  They poured stories of unfaithfulness into the ears of a faithless woman whose name will go down to posterity as an ignoble wife and callous mother.  She took with her into Austria the King of Rome, a beautiful child who was put under the care of Austrian tutors.  He was watched as though he held the destinies of empires in the hollow of his hand.  His father’s name was not allowed to fall on his youthful ears, and more than one tutor was dismissed because he secretly told him something of his father’s fame.  Treated as a prisoner, spied upon by Metternich’s satellites, not allowed to have any visitors without this immortal Chancellor’s permission, not allowed to communicate with his father’s family or with Frenchmen, this pathetic figure, stuffed with Austrian views, is seized with a growing desire to learn the history of his father, who declared in a letter to his brother Joseph in 1814 that he would rather see his son strangled than see him brought up in Vienna as an Austrian prince.[18]

Prince Napoleon in his excellent book—­“Napoleon and His Detractors”—­refers to the young Prince playing a game of billiards with Marmont and Don Miguel, the former having been one of his father’s most important generals.  He it was who betrayed him, and now he is become the Duke’s confidant and instructor.  The Prince says that his cousin asked to be told about the deeds that his father had done, his fall, and exile.  There does not appear to be any record in existence as to what Marmont conveyed or withheld from the son of Marie Louise, but there is much evidence to show that the young man was not only an eager student of his father’s career, but fully realised his own importance and influence on European politics.

It has been stated that until 1830 he really knew nothing of passing events in the land of his birth.  Obenaus, his tutor, states in his diary, January 18, 1825:  “During the afternoon walk, the political relations of the Prince to the Imperial family and to the rest of the world were discussed.”  Count Neipperg advised him to study the French language, and his reply was:  “This advice has not fallen on an unfruitful or an ungrateful soil.  Every imaginable motive inspires me with the desire to perfect myself in, and to overcome the difficulties of, a language which at the present moment forms the most essential part of my studies.  It is the language in which my father gave the word of command in all his battles, in which his name was covered with glory, and in which he has left us unparalleled memoirs of the art of war; while to the last he expressed the wish that I should never repudiate the nation into which I was born."[19] He further adds, “The chief aim of my life must be not to remain unworthy of my father’s fame.”