Princess of Baden, [Stephanie Beauharnais.] (For her marriage, see note, end of Series F.)
Hortense was by no means happy with her husband at the best of times, and she cordially hated Holland. She was said to be very frightened of Napoleon, but (like most people) could easily influence her mother. Napoleon's letter to her of this date (October 5th) is certainly not a severe one:—"I have received yours of September 14th. I am sending to the Chief Justice in order to accord pardon to the individual in whom you are interested. Your news always gives me pleasure. I trust you will keep well, and never doubt my great friendship for you."
The Grand Duke, i.e. of Würzburg. The castle where Napoleon was staying seemed to him sufficiently strong to be armed and provisioned, and he made a great depôt in the city. "Volumes," says Méneval, "would not suffice to describe the multitude of his military and administrative measures here, and the precautions which he took against even the most improbable hazards of war."
Florence.—Probably September 1796, when Napoleon was hard pressed, and Josephine had to fetch a compass from Verona to regain Milan, and thus evade Wurmser's troops.
No. 2.
Bamberg.—Arriving at Bamberg on the 6th, Napoleon issued a proclamation to his army which concluded—"Let the Prussian army experience the same fate that it experienced fourteen years ago. Let it learn that, if it is easy to acquire increase of territory and power by means of the friendship of the great people, their enmity, which can be provoked only by the abandonment of all spirit of wisdom and sense, is more terrible than the tempests of the ocean."
Eugène.—Napoleon wrote him on the 5th, and twice on the 7th, on which date we have eighteen letters in the Correspondence.
Her husband.—The Hereditary Grand Duke of Baden, to whom Napoleon had written from Mayence on September 30th, accepting his services, and fixing the rendezvous at Bamberg for October 4th or 5th.
On this day Napoleon invaded Prussian territory by entering Bayreuth, having preceded by one day the date of their ultimatum—a rhapsody of twenty pages, which Napoleon in his First Bulletin compares to "one of those which the English Cabinet pay their literary men £500 per annum to write." It is in this Bulletin where he describes the Queen of Prussia (dressed as an Amazon, in the uniform of her regiment of dragoons, and writing twenty letters a day) to be like Armida in her frenzy, setting fire to her own palace.
No. 3.