turbulent period in European history. In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte became First Consul of France, and later became Emperor. He then began a series of conflicts and established systems of alliances known as "Coalitions" over Europe that frequently redefined the continent's borders. Austria was an active participant in all of the Napoleonic Wars, against France, her historical enemy. Napoleon shook the old European royal institutions, and fierce battles began through the Holy Roman Empire. Her older sister, Archduchess Maria Ludovika, married Napoleon in 1810, seeking to strengthen the ties between France and Austria. This union was undoubtedly one of the most serious defeats of the House of Habsburg; their maternal grandmother, Queen Maria Carolina of Naples and Sicily (who deeply hated everything about France after execution of her beloved sister Queen Marie Antoinette in 1793), grunted with her son-in-law's attitude: “It was precisely what I lacked, to now become the devil's grandmother”. Education On 13 April 1807, the 10-year-old Archduchess lost her mother after she suffered complications due to childbirth. A year later (6 January 1808), her father remarried to the woman Maria Leopoldina would later describe as the most important person in her life, Maria Ludovika of Austria-Este. First-cousin of her husband and granddaughter of Empress Maria Theresa, the new Empress was well-educated and surpassed her predecessor in culture and intellectual brilliance. Muse and personal friend of the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, she was responsible for the intellectual formation of her stepdaughter, developing in Maria Leopoldina a taste for literature, nature and music by Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven. Because she had no children of her own, she willingly adopted those of her predecessor; Maria Leopoldina always considered her stepmother to be her mother and she grew up with Empress Maria Ludovika as her "spiritual mother". Thanks to her, the Archduchess had the chance of meeting Goethe in 1810 and 1812, when she went to Carlsbad with her stepmother. Maria Leopoldina was raised according to the three Habsburg principles: discipline, piety and sense of duty. Her childhood was marked by a strict education, diverse cultural stimulation and successive wars that threatened her father's domains. She and her siblings were raised in accordance with the educational principles laid down by their grandfather, Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, who preached equality between men, treating everyone with courtesy, the need to practise charity, and above all, the sacrifice of their own