Napoleon II operated under the double burden of both having an incredibly famous father and being far too young to capitalize on his name. Both Metternich and the young Napoleon II's grandfather recognized the potential of the young man assuming the role of a figurehead for a Bonapartist movement, and as such kept him in something of a gilded cage in Austria. Although Napoleon II received an education and showed great interest in following a military profession, his contact with his father was often quite removed and through books. Given his circumscribed routine and retinue, Napoleon II was less of an agent for a Bonapartist restoration and instead became a symbol for a return of Bonapartism.

One of the more serious attempts to return Napoleon II to the French throne occurred less than a year after the Hundred Days and illustrates the symbolic power the younger Napoleon possessed. In May 1816, the lawyer Jean-Paul Didier led an abortive revolt in Grenoble that tried to seize the town's armory. According to reports, Didier both challenged the Allied occupation of France and promised the crowd that their efforts would lead to a proper restoration of Napoleon II. Didier had been involved in both the Revolution and Empire, and he had recently lost his appointment to the Grenoble law school. Thus while Didier may well have been a Bonapartist, the "White Terror" and purging of allegedly disloyal elements in the immediate aftermath of Waterloo heightened tensions. By emphasizing Napoleon II, instead of his more illustrious, and still living, father, Didier played to pro-Bonapartist sentiments without summoning up the spectre of a renewed war. The Didier Affair's ignominious end, which saw its leader executed by court-martial in June 1816, also highlighted the confused politics. The head of the Seventh Military Division who put an end to Didier's armed mob, Gabriel Donnadieu, was an ambitious social climber and Royalist who hoped that swift action would ingratiate him to the Bourbon government. Donnadieu was a veteran of both the Revolutionary and Imperial armies and although he took up the Royalist cause during the Empire, his personal biography made him somewhat suspect in the eyes of the newly returned Bourbons.

The rhetoric of the Dadier Affair, which simultaneously promised to free the French from their Bourbon or foreign yoke as well as restoring a safe imperial dynasty, became one of the hallmarks of Bonapartist materials in the decade and a half after Waterloo. Napoleon II's role in these materials was less a carbon-copy of his father, but rather as a safer alternative to the Bourbons. The forged Declaration of Marie Louise promised that her son would open the prisons and likewise restore France to her proper glory. Coins and medallions often circulated with Napoleon II's likeness and the Feast of St. Napoleon (15 August) was one of the times where these materials were distributed. One common feature of this agitprop was it often insinuated that the Bourbons were the puppets of the British, and Napoleon II would be a true French monarch. The "Eaglet"'s Austrian upbringing and title was often glossed over.

The symbolic importance of Napoleon II to the Bonapartist movement picked up with the death of his father in 1821. The death of Napoleon helped to precipitate a wider rehabilitation of the Emperor and his era. Napoleonic paraphernalia and kitsch appeared in French marketplaces, and this media mixed nationalism, nostalgia, and contemporary politics. This led to a notable uptick in the visible media presence of Napoleon II, as one of the popular motifs for a number of prints was to have Napoleon performing an action with his son in the background. Despite the fact that the French government considered this media seditious, it was incredibly hard to stamp out with some of it being produced across the Rhine in Germany. Much of the Napoleonic kitsch often walked a fine line between sedition and consumer tastes. Consuming and displaying liquors like Elixur du Duc de Reichstadt, which gained some popularity in the 1820s, could be interpreted as a pro-Bonapartist sign, but also as a sign of consumer tastes and fashion. But these materials did perpetuate an image of Napoleon II as an alternative against the existing political order. There were reports of various crowds during political disturbances shouting Napoleon II's name.

As for the young man himself, Napoleon II had to observe these developments at a distance. A number of Bonapartist figures ranging from his uncle Joseph to his stepbrother Eugene appealed for a return of the Eaglet to France, but these entreaties typically were not addressed to Napoleon II, but to Metternich, the Emperor Franz, and his mother. Joseph's appeal to Metternich in July 1830 claimed that not only would Napoleon II's return would lead to a strengthening of Franco-Austrian relations, but that the elder Bonaparte would act as the young man's guide to French politics. Such appeals fell on deaf ears in Vienna, as Napoleon II was too young and potentially tractable to be trusted to the politics of the July Revolution. Napoleon II's own emerging health problems contributed to his lack of activity during this period of political transition, but while Metternich might toy with the idea of giving Napoleon II a passport, such plans never translated into concrete action.

Thus Napoleon II's abortive political career was the obverse of what his father had predicted for his progeny. When he was born, the elder Napoleon likened himself to Philip of Macedon and his son to Alexander; all the younger Napoleon had to do was reach for the glory his father had built for him. Instead, Napoleon II found himself as a pawn with little to no power of his own. As a symbol, the figure of Napoleon II was quite potent and many Bonapartist appreciated its power. But there was very little in the way of concrete plans to restore the young man to his father's thrones. Didier may have been a serious Bonapartist, but his efforts were much more directed towards toppling the Bourbon government and then inviting the son to return. By hitching Napoleon II's restoration to revolutionary action, the Bonapartists precluded any substantive Habsburg assistance to let the Eaglet fly home.

Sources Alexander, R. S. Re-Writing the French Revolutionary Tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Hazareesingh, Sudhir. The Legend of Napoleon. London: Granta Books, 2004.

Wertheimer, Eduard. The Duke of Reichstadt (Napoleon the Second). London: J. Lane, 1905.