March 1811, in Paris at the Tuileries palace. He was at first named the king of Rome, after the analogy of the heirs of-the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. By his birth the Napoleonic dynasty seemed to be finally established; but in three years it crumbled in the dust. At the time of the downfall of the empire (April 1814) Marie Louise and the king of Rome were at Blois with Joseph and Jerome Bonaparte, who wished to keep them as hostages. This design, however, was frustrated. Napoleon abdicated in favour of his son; but events prevented the reign of Napoleon II. from being more than titular. While Napoleon repaired to Elba, his consort and child went to Vienna; and they remained in Austria during the Hundred Days (1815), despite efforts made by the Bonapartists to carry off the prince to his father at Paris.
Meanwhile the congress of Vienna had carried out the conditions of the treaty of Fontainebleau (March 1814) whereby the duchies of Parma and Guastalla were to go to the ex-Empress Marie Louise and her son, although much opposition was offered to this proposal by Louis XVIII. and even (so it now appears) by Metternich. The secret treaty of the 31st of May 1815 between Austria, Russia and Prussia secured those possessions to her, her son bearing the title Prince of Parma, with hereditary rights for his descendants. But after the second abdication of Napoleon in favour of his son (22nd of June 1815)—a condition which was wholly nugatory—the powers opposed all participation of the prince in the affairs of Parma. He therefore remained in Austria, while Marie Louise proceeded to Parmal From this time onward he became, as it were, a pawn in the complex game of European politics, his claims being put forward sometimes by Metternich, sometimes by the unionists of Italy, while occasionally malcontents in France used his name to discredit the French Bourbons. The efforts of malcontents increased the resolve of the sovereigns never to allow a son of Napoleon to bear rule; and in November 1816 the court of Vienna informed Marie Louise that her son could not succeed to the duchies. This decision was confirmed by the treaty of Paris of the 10th of June 1817. Marie Louise demanded as a slight compensation that he should have a title derived from the lands of the “Bavarian Palatinate” in northern Bohemia, and the title of “duke of Reichstadt” was therefore conferred on him on the 22nd of July 1818. Thus Napoleon I., who once averred that he would prefer that his son should be strangled rather than brought up as an Austrian prince, lived to see his son reduced to a rank inferior to that of the Austrian archdukes.
His education was confided chiefly to Count Dietrichstein, who found him precocious, volatile, passionate and fond of military affairs. The same judgment was given by Marshal Marmont, duke of Ragusa, who recognized the warlike strain in his character. His nature was sensitive, as appeared on his receiving the news of the death of his father in 1821. The upheaval in France in 1830 and the disturbances which ensued led many Frenchmen to turn their thoughts to Napoleon II.; but though Metternich dallied for a time with the French Bonapartists, he had no intention of inaugurating a Napoleonic revival. By this time, too, the duke’s health was on the decline; his impatience of all restraint and his indulgence in physical exercise far beyond his powers aggravated a natural weakness of the chest, and he died on the 22nd of July 1832.
See A. M. Barthelemy and I. P. A. Méry, Le Fils de l’homme (Paris, 1829), Baron G. I. Comte de Montbel, Le Duc de Reichstadt (Paris, 1832); J. de Saint-Félix, Histoire de Napoléon II. (Paris, 1853); Guy de l'Hérault, Histoire de Napoléon II. (Paris, 1853); Count Anton von Prokesch-Osten, Mein Verhältnis zum Herzog von Reichstadt (Stuttgart, 1878); H. Welschinger, Le Roi de Rome (Paris, 1897); E. de Wertheimer, The Duke of Reichstadt (Eng. ed., London, 1905); M. Rostand's play L’Aiglon is a dramatic setting of the career of the prince. (J. Hl. R.)
REID, SIR GEORGE (1841– ), Scottish artist, was born
in Aberdeen on the 31st of October 1841. He developed an
early passion for drawing, which led to his being apprenticed
in 1854 for seven years to Messrs Keith & Gibb, lithographers
in Aberdeen. In 1861 Reid took lessons from an itinerant
portrait-painter, William Niddrie, who had been a pupil of
James Giles, R.S.A., and afterwards entered as a student in
the school of the Board of Trustees in Edinburgh. He returned
to Aberdeen to paint landscapes and portraits for any trifling
sum which his work could command. His first portrait to
attract attention, from its fine quality, was that of George
Macdonald, the poet and novelist, now the property of the
university of Aberdeen. His early landscapes were conscientiously
painted in the open air and on the spot. But
Reid soon came to see that such work was inherently false,
painted as the picture was day after day under varying conditions
of light and shade. Accordingly, in 1865 he proceeded
to Utrecht to study under A. Mollinger, whose work he admired,
from its unity and simplicity. This change in his
method of viewing Nature was looked on as revolutionary by
the Royal Scottish Academy, and for some years his work
found little favour in that quarter; but other artists gradually
adopted the system of tone-studies, which ultimately prevailed.
Reid went to Paris in 1868 to study under the figure
painter Yvon; and he worked in 1872 with Josef Israëls
at the Hague. From this time forward Reid's success was
continuous and marked. He showed his versatility in landscape,
as in his “Whins in Bloom,” which combined great
breadth with fine detail; in flower-pieces, such as his “Roses,”
which were brilliant in rapid suggestiveness and force; but
most of all in his portraits, which are marked by great individuality,
and by fine insight into character. His work in
black-and-white, his admirable illustrations in brushwork of
Edinburgh and its neighbourhood, and also his pen-drawings,
about which it has been declared that “his work contains
all the subtleties and refinements of a most delicate etching,”
must also be noted. Elected Associate of the Royal Scottish
Academy in 1870, Reid attained full membership in 1877,
and took up his residence in Edinburgh in 1882. In 1891
he was elected President—a post which he held until 1902—receiving
also the honour of knighthood, and he was awarded
a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. His brother
Samuel (b. 1854) was also a painter and a writer of tales and
verse.
REID, ROBERT (1862– ), American artist, was born at
Stockbridge, Mass., on the 29th of July 1862. He studied
at the art schools of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the
Art Students' League, New York, and 'under Boulanger and
Lefebvre in Paris. His early pictures were figures of French
peasants, painted at Etaples, but subsequently he became best
known for mural decoration and designs for stained glass.
He contributed with others to the frescoes of the dome of
the Liberal Arts Building at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago,
in 1893. Other work is in the Congressional Library, Washington,
the Appellate Court House, New York, and the State
House, Boston, where are his three large panels, “James
Otis Delivering his Speech against the Writs of Assistance,”
“Paul Revere's Ride” and the “Boston Tea Party.” He
executed a panel for the American Pavilion at the Paris Exhibition,
1900, and in 1906 he completed a series of ten stained
glass windows for a church at Fairhaven, Mass., for the Rogers
Memorial. In 1906 he became a full member of the National
Academy of Design.
REID, SIR ROBERT GILLESPIE (1840–1908), Canadian
railway contractor, was born at Coupar-Angus, Scotland.
When a young man he spent a few years in Australia gold mining,
and in 1871 he settled in America, where he began his
career as a contractor. He built one section of the Canadian
Pacific railway, and was responsible for the erection of the
international bridge over the Niagara river, the international
railway bridge over the Rio Grande river and the Lachine
bridge over the St Lawrence. In 1892, Reid signed a contract
with the government of Newfoundland by which he undertook
to construct a railway from St John’s to Port-aux-Basques
and to work the line for ten years in return for a large grant
of land. In 1898 he further contracted to work all the railways
in Newfoundland for fifty years on condition that at the end
