Category: Austrian Politics

• The Duke of Reichstadt’s Poisoning

  This theory held that Napoleon’s son—known as the Duke of Reichstadt and, to Bonapartists, as Napoleon II—did not simply die of illness in Vienna in 1832, but was gradually weakened or intentionally poisoned by Austrian authorities who feared that his survival might revive the Napoleonic cause. The historical record clearly shows that the young duke was politically useful to Metternich, carefully controlled at the Austrian court, and officially died of tuberculosis at age twenty-one. What remains unproven is the allegation of systematic poisoning, though the political logic behind the rumor was obvious to Bonapartists who saw him as a “prisoner of Vienna.”