Louise was forced to sell her pocessions in public, even her own underwear. Phillip felt humiliated by this and the Emperor was shocked and urged Phillip to do something about it. As a solution to the problem, Phillip had to buy everything that was sold by Louise, even the undergarments. Followed by fiunancial troubles Louise left for Croatia, but even there the power of the Habsburg court was felt.
Count Mattacic was soon arrested for embazzlement and lost his title. Louise, who didn´t find any support with her children or Belgian relatives, was send to a ÿchiatric hospital. She was ignored by her relatives in Vienna and Brussels, only her sister, Crownprincess Stefanie of Austria kept in touch with her in secret. Mattacic managed to escape from prison and was able to release the Princess in a heroic way, after which the two fled to France. There the Princess acquired a divorce from her husband and got estranged completely from her father. King Leopold II remarked that his daughter was dead to him, to which the Emperor of Austria cynically (but probably close to the truth) replied that Leopold even had to ¨pay for a dead daughter.
After Leopolds death Louise and her sisters chose the attack, they were hunting for the Baroness de Vaughan, Leopodl II's mistress who was left with a considerable part of Leopolds fortune. The sisters started a court case against the Belgian state to defend their rights to the inheritence. But it was to no avail, the King even preferred to put his money in the 'Royal Dotation' than to give it to his own daughters. In the end the sisters only 15 million francs, only a fraction of the original capital.
Louise died in 1924, a year after Count Mattacic while she lived impoverished in Paris. She died while holding the picture of her deceased lover...
