Then Napoleon might have adopted one of his own illegitimate sons. Even this wild project he considered carefully, but he put it aside. The only course left open was to divorce Josephine and take some more fruitful wife instead, and Napoleon gradually came to accept this project.
Whether he was wise or not in this course of action cannot be decided definitely. Certainly he was not justified in the event, and he later alluded to the Austrian marriage as an “abyss covered with flowers.” What he left out of full consideration when making his decision was that, while Europe might suffer his tyranny uncomplainingly if they believed that the system would end with his death, they would endeavour to end it at once if there were a chance of its continuing indefinitely. In a similar manner the birth of an heir to James II. of England had precipitated matters a century before. But whether Napoleon forgot this point, or whether he believed his Empire more stable than it actually was, he nevertheless determined on divorce and a new marriage.
On his return from the Wagram campaign of 1809, Josephine found him fixed in his decision. The connection between their apartments was walled up, and for weeks the Emperor and the Empress never met without a third person being present. It seems strange that the man who did not falter at Eylau, who sent the Guard to destruction at Waterloo, should have been daunted by the prospect of a woman’s tears, but Napoleon undoubtedly put off the unpleasant interview as long as possible. At last he nerved himself to the inevitable, and the dreaded sentence was pronounced. An official of the palace tells a story of Napoleon’s sudden appearance among the Imperial ladies-in-waiting carrying the fainting Empress in his arms. Ten days later, on the 15th of December, Josephine announced her acquiescence in the decision to the Imperial council, and the marriage was annulled by senatus consultum.
Napoleon had endeavoured to procure a more satisfactory form of divorce from the Pope, but Pius, to his credit, would not assist him. Five years before, at the coronation, he had refused his blessing until the Imperial pair had been married by the Church (the marriage in 1796 was purely a legal contract), and Napoleon, exasperated but compelled to yield, had submitted to a ceremony conducted by the Archbishop of Paris under conditions of the utmost secrecy. Pius could not in decency give his aid to break a marriage celebrated at his especial request only five years before, and in consequence he found himself a prisoner in French hands, and the last of the patrimony of St. Peter was annexed to the French Empire.
It would puzzle a cleverer man even than Napoleon to devise a series of actions better calculated to annoy the Church and its more devout followers.
For Josephine the pill was gilded in a style more elaborate even than was customary under the Empire. She retained her Imperial titles; she received the Elysée at Paris, Malmaison, and the palace of Navarre. An income of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling per annum was settled upon her. No restraint in reason was set upon her actions; she was not forced into retirement; and Napoleon continued to visit her even after his marriage to Marie Louise. For the last four years of her life Josephine occupied a position unique in history.
Josephine bore her troubles well in public. However much she may have wept to Napoleon, however much she may have knelt at his feet imploring him to have mercy, to the world at large she showed dry eyes and an immobile expression. Perhaps her pride came to her help; perhaps, after all, freedom, the title of Empress, and a monstrous income, may have reconciled her to her loss of precedence; it is even conceivable that she preferred the sympathy of Europe, expressed in no uncertain voice, to the burdens of royalty.
Josephine all her life was a poseuse of minor mental capacity; what could be more gratifying to her than a situation where the possibilities of posing were quite unlimited?
For her, these possibilities were never cut short. She never had to endure the anticlimax of being the divorced wife of a fallen Emperor; she died suddenly just before Napoleon’s first abdication, soon after receiving visits from all sorts of Emperors and Kings who were accompanying their armies in the campaign of 1814.