Hortense Makers of History Series

Hortense, from the Makers of History Series is a popular biography by John Stevens Cabot Abbott of Queen Hortense of Holland (1783-1837). The book belongs to the Makers of History series that Abbott produced across the 1850s and 1860s for the American educational and popular reading market.

Hortense de Beauharnais sits at the center of the Bonaparte family network that dominated European politics during the Napoleonic period. She was the daughter of Josephine de Beauharnais by her first marriage, the stepdaughter of Napoleon after Napoleon married Josephine in 1796, and the wife of Louis Bonaparte who became King of Holland in 1806. She was also the mother of Napoleon III, who would establish the French Second Empire in 1852 and rule until his defeat by Prussia in 1870.

Her actual life was dramatic. The marriage to Louis Bonaparte was unhappy and the couple separated in 1810 while Louis was still nominally King of Holland. After the fall of Napoleon I in 1814 and 1815, she lived mostly in exile, eventually settling at the Château Arenenberg in Switzerland where she raised her sons including the future Napoleon III. She was a talented musician and amateur composer, and several of her songs including Partant pour la Syrie became popular favorites in Second Empire France.

Abbott's Makers of History series was widely used in American schools and as popular reading during the 1850s through the 1880s. The series covered figures including Cleopatra, Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Charles I, Mary Queen of Scots, Marie Antoinette, and various others, with Abbott working through the relevant historical material in accessible biographical form.

The Bonaparte connection gave the Hortense volume topical interest. Napoleon III had become Emperor in 1852 and was a major figure in European politics through the 1860s, so a biography of his mother provided useful background for American readers following the contemporary French political situation.

The book runs about three hundred pages. It pairs with the other Makers of History volumes.