… in 1813 (Joachim was her sister Caroline’s husband), Elise had to abdicate all her holdings. Lucca was captured by Murat’s anti-Napoleonic forces, and a pregnant Elise fled to Austria and then to Trieste where she hid with her brother Jerome.
Elise was imprisoned at the exile of Napoleon, but allowed to go back to Trieste and keep her title of Countess of Compignano. There she worked with archaelogical digs.
(portrait: an older, yet still Regency fashionable Elise in 1812)