Napoleon and his court

by C. S. Forester

By the time of his birth, however, Napoleon had formed a new attachment, and Eléonore was never again admitted to his rooms. Napoleon saw that both his son and his ex-mistress were suitably provided for; he settled a thousand pounds a year on Eléonore and married her to a prominent politician (a Monsieur Augier), while he invested large sums of money in trust for her son, Léon. He further mentioned him in his will. Eléonore’s later career was unlucky; her second husband died, a prisoner in Russian hands, and when she married for a third time she was blackmailed for the rest of her life by her first husband and by her scapegrace illegitimate son. Léon ruined all his chances of success in life by his reckless way of living. He gambled away all he possessed, and then lived on what small sums he could beg from his mother and from his Bonaparte relations. He plunged into politics, and even considered for a while standing as a candidate for the position of President of the Second Republic in opposition to Louis Napoleon. He induced the latter to give him a small pension; he made all manner of claims upon the Government, and squandered whatever he obtained in a wild fashion. He issued all sorts of remarkable suggestions, not one of them of the slightest value, on every conceivable subject, and he raised the most frightful clamour when they were disregarded. There is no doubt that he was mentally deranged. He died in 1881 without having accomplished a single noteworthy action.

There is a faint doubt as to Léon’s paternity, due to his mother’s way of living, but the doubts are countered by his striking physical resemblance to the Emperor. Napoleon himself certainly believed him to be his own child; perhaps if he could have foreseen the later career of the child in question he would have been more chary of his acknowledgment. The whole affair seems to be very much wrapped in doubt; Napoleon evinced for young Léon not half the care which he displayed for his other sons, while Léon’s birth (perhaps because it took place while Napoleon was away in Poland) did not rouse nearly as much interest as Walewski’s three years later.

It has already been said that at the time of Léon’s birth Napoleon’s attention was occupied by a new mistress; it was this particular mistress who has been elevated by some writers to the proud position of being “the only woman Napoleon ever loved,” and who certainly held whatever affection the Emperor was able to display for a longer period than any other woman. To begin with, she was of a rank and class far different from any of her predecessors, Josephine not excepted, while secondly she was far fonder of him than was any other woman. The circumstances in which the two met were romantic. Napoleon had just overturned the Prussian monarchy; he had advanced like lightning from the Rhine to the Niemen, and he burst at the head of the Grand Army into Poland, where never before had a French army appeared. The Poles were in ecstasy. They had not the least doubt that their period of slavery was ended, and that the young conqueror would once more unchain the White Eagle. Deputations thronged to meet him, and mobs gave him homage in the villages. At the little town of Bronia, not far from Warsaw, a lady was presented to him at her earnest request, for she had braved all the terrors of the hysterical mob in order to meet him. She proved to be hardly more than a child, and dazzlingly beautiful. Napoleon thanked her for her kindness, and said that he was anxious to see her again. The whole interview barely lasted a minute, for it was imperative that Napoleon should press on to Warsaw, but it made a deep impression on both of them.

Marie Laczinska was the daughter of one of the old noble families of Poland, and she had recently married Anastase Colonna de Walewice-Walewska. Although Marie’s family was noble, it was hardly to be compared with that of her husband, for Anastase was not only the head of a house in whose veins ran the bluest blood of Poland, but he also traced his descent to the Roman family of Colonna, and through them his line ran back into the mists of history beyond the Carolings and the Merovings until one could trace its source among the patrician families of republican Rome. He was rich, he was famous, he held vast power. The only objections to him as a husband were that he was seventy years old and already had grandchildren who were older than Marie. In the minds of Marie’s guardians such objections were trivial, and the young girl was forced into marriage with the old noble, to play the part of Abishag to Walewska’s David. She was not fated to endure this for long, because Napoleon had not forgotten the meeting at Bronia, and sought her at all the fêtes at which he appeared in Warsaw. The secret could not be kept, and soon all Poland was aware that the great Emperor was in love with the Polish lady. The nationalist party heard the news with wild exultation, and Poniatowski, the hope of Poland, called upon her to sacrifice herself for her country. The other great nobles pressed her feverishly, and they contrived to persuade Walewska (who, naturally, was the only man who was ignorant of what was going on) to bring his wife to a ball which Poniatowski was giving in the Emperor’s honour.

Marie came reluctantly. She was dressed as plainly as possible, in white satin without jewels, and, once in the ballroom, she kept herself as far in the background as she could. To no purpose, however. Napoleon, overjoyed, observed her as soon as she appeared, and immediately sent to her and requested her to dance with him. She refused. Duroc and Poniatowski remonstrated with her, but she remained adamant. Many other French officers had already noticed her dazzling beauty, her rich fair hair and the blueness of her eyes, and they swarmed round her. Napoleon watched the proceedings jealously from the other end of the room. As soon as any one of his officers appeared to have made any progress, he called to his Chief of Staff, and that particular officer was sent off post haste to carry a message somewhere out in the bleak countryside a hundred miles away. The situation verged on the impossible. Napoleon in desperation made a tour of the room, speaking to all the hundreds of women present merely in order to exchange half a dozen words with the one who was the cause of all this trouble. When at last he reached Madame Walewska the interview was unsatisfactory. She was as pale as death, and said nothing. He was vastly and unusually embarrassed. “White upon white is a mistake, Madame,” he said, looking at her pale cheeks. Then—“This is not the sort of reception I expected after——” Then he passed on, and left the ballroom soon after.

That same evening she received a wild, urgent note from Napoleon. Others followed in rapid succession. Poniatowski and all the fiery patriots of Poland implored her to yield. Her blind husband, infatuated by this remarkable new popularity, bore her to reception after reception. A mercenary old aunt of hers, tampered with by Poniatowski, flung herself into the business as well, and offered herself as go-between. At last she received a letter from Napoleon hinting that he would restore Poland if she would yield. She yielded. Napoleon did not restore Poland.

For Poland’s sake she had broken her marriage vows and violated all the dictates of her conscience. Napoleon, in return, temporized and compromised. He erected the Grand Duchy of Warsaw out of territory torn from Prussia, but the Grand Duchy was not autonomous, it was not called Poland, it was only one-third the size of the old land of the White Eagle. Poor Marie protested to the best of her ability, to be soothed by fair words from the Emperor. At Napoleon’s request she left Poland after Tilsit, and came to Paris, where she lived in extreme retirement, visited by Napoleon as often as he could manage. Her gentleness and dislike of display must have been grateful to Napoleon after his other experiences, and he passed many happy hours with her. She was by his side during the maelstrom of the Essling campaign, and at Schönbrunn, the Palace of the Cæsars, she told him she was about to bear him a child. She did not realize then that from that selfsame palace Napoleon would summon, in a few months’ time, a young girl who would supplant her in his affections, and who would also bear him a son, who, in place of being a nameless bastard, would bear the title of King of Rome. She went back to her dear Poland for the event, and at Walewice, in May, 1810, Alexander-Florian-Joseph-Colonna-Walewski was born. On her return to Paris Napoleon had married Marie Louise.

Napoleon softened the blow for her as well as he could. He heaped wealth upon her; he gave her town houses and country houses; the Imperial officials were always at her orders, and the Imperial theatres were always open to her. Her son, young Walewski, was made a Count of the Empire. Perhaps this was some consolation to her. Perhaps—seeing that it was her son’s birth which had determined Napoleon to make a new marriage—not. Napoleon even found time during the turmoil of the Campaign of France to make additional arrangements in their favour, but by this time whatever remained of the affair had long since burnt itself out.

After the fall of the Empire, Marie Walewska seems to have considered herself free. She paid a mysterious visit to Napoleon at Elba in 1814, accompanied by her little son, and she was present at the Tuileries on Napoleon’s arrival there during the Hundred Days, but apparently on neither occasion was the old relationship renewed. In 1816 she married a distant cousin of the Bonapartes, a certain d’Ornano, a Colonel of the Guard, but she was not destined long to enjoy her new happiness. Marie de Walewska died in December, 1817.

Poor Marie! Her life was short, but it must have been full of bitterness. Napoleon’s affairs of the heart (if they are even worthy of that name) all seem inexpressibly harsh and matter-of-fact. He seemed to have a kind of Midas touch in these matters, whereby everything honourable and romantic with which he came into contact turned, not into gold, but into lead. Various authors have tried to infuse into his association with Marie de Walewska some gleam of romance, some essence of the self-sacrificing spirit which is noticeable in the parallel deeds of other monarchs, but they have failed. Marie certainly seems at first to have believed him to be a hero, a knight without reproach as well as without fear, but as soon as she was disillusioned she resigned herself to an existence as drab as if she had been once more a septuagenarian’s wife, and not the mistress of an Emperor. Contemporary Parisian society was almost entirely ignorant of her existence. She paid no calls, and she received none. The few appearances she made at Court were such as were only to be expected from a Polish lady of high rank. Napoleon could not keep her love for long, and, though she was faithful to him as long as the Empire endured, she obviously considered herself free as soon as Napoleon was sent to St. Helena. It was not the long-drawn, heroic romance some writers have endeavoured to make it appear; rather was it a brief burst of passion, and then—monotony.