Excerpt from The Youth of the Duchess of Angouleme These reflections occur to us as soon as we begin the third series of The Women of the Tuileries. It will perhaps be said that we are inclined to attach an exaggerated importance to women. In our Opinion they have too Often been neglected in history. Without deep study of the character and life of Marie Antoinette it is impossible to under stand the Old Regime or the Revolution; and yet it is only within the last twenty years that history has become seriously interested in this most touching and interesting figure. M. Thiers gave hardly any pages to the Empress Josephine. Nevertheless, we think that, without that woman, Bonaparte would never have been the commander-in-chief of the Army Of Italy, First Consul, or Emperor. AS to Marie Louise, feeble as her image seems at the first glance, we believe that her career illustrates both the culminating point and the decline of Napoleon better than any of the commentaries. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.