In 1824, Eugène and Hortense, both exiles from France since 1815, bought one of the chapels in the church at Reuil and placed in it the beautiful monument to Josephine which is to be seen there to-day. In 1831, Hortense crossed France incognito with Louis-Napoleon, and the two then, for the first time, saw the monument. From Reuil they went to Malmaison, but only to the gates. Five years before, the chateau had been sold to a Swedish banker, and the porter refused Hortense admission because she had no pass from the proprietor.
Seven years after this sad visit, Hortense was brought to Reuil to be laid beside her mother. But it was not until twelve years later, when her son, Josephine’s beloved Oui-oui, Louis-Napoleon, had become emperor, that a monument was placed in the church to her memory. With the return of the Bonapartes to power, the memory of Josephine became a cult. It was she alone of all the women who for seventy years had ruled France, Napoleon III. told his people, who had brought them happiness. Her statue was reared in Paris; her name was given to a grand avenue; Malmaison was bought, made more brilliant than ever, and thrown open to visitors. On every hand her life was extolled, her character glorified. As a result of this attempt at canonization, Josephine became for the world a pure and gentle heroine, the victim of her own unselfish devotion to the man she loved. With the passing of the Napoleonic dynasty, it has become possible to study her life dispassionately. The researches show her to have been much less of a saint than Napoleon III. wished the world to believe.
Josephine was by birth and training the victim of a vicious system. Her nature was essentially shallow, her strongest passions being for attention, gaiety, and the possession of beautiful apparel and jewels. Nothing in her early surroundings showed her that there were better things in life to pursue. None of the hard experiences of later life dimmed these passions. To gratify them she was willing to adapt herself to any society, and freely give her person to the lover who promised most. It would be unjust to judge her by the orderly standards of present-day Anglo-Saxon morality—she, an eighteenth century creole, cast almost a child into the chaotic whirl of the French Revolution. What purity or dignity could be expected of a child of her nature when her chief protectors, her father, her aunt, and her husband, were all notoriously unfaithful to the most sacred relations of life! If Josephine, when abandoned by her husband and later thrown on her own resources in a society which was honey-combed with vice, went with her world, one can only pity.
There is little doubt that if she had been faithful to Napoleon from the beginning of their married life, her future with him would have been different. The fatal disillusion he suffered in 1797 made the divorce possible for him. So long as Josephine was true, no other woman could have existed for him. Such is the strange exclusiveness in love, of a nature, brutal, sweet, and strong like Napoleon’s. It should never be forgotten, however, that when the poor little creole realized, that to keep her position she must be faithful, she never after gave offense, and that as the years went on her devotion to her husband became a cult. Nothing indeed in the history of women is more pathetic than the patience, the sweetness, with which Josephine performed all the exacting and uncongenial duties of her position as Empress.
Although Josephine possessed none of those qualities which make a heroic soul, knew nothing of true self-denial, was a coward in danger, never lost sight of personal interest, was an abject time-server, few women have been loved more sincerely by those surrounding them. There was good reason for this. No word of malice ever crossed her lips, she took no joy in seeing an enemy suffer, she never intrigued, she never flagged in kindly service. If she was incapable of heroic deeds at least her days were filled with small courtesies, kind words, generous acts. A candid survey of her life destroys the heroine, but it leaves a woman who through a stormy life kept a kindly heart towards friend and enemy and who at last attained rectitude of conduct.
And this is the most that can be said for her. It touches the woman Josephine only. As for the Empress Josephine, she is only a name. She held her throne by the accident of her marriage and never took it seriously. She never comprehended the ideas it stood for in the mind of the great tyrant who established it. The prosperity of the French people—the glory of French arms, the spread of just laws, the establishment of a stable system, all those notions for which Napoleon was struggling, meant nothing to her save as they affected the tenure of her own position. The one distinguished opportunity she had of serving the Napoleonic idea—the divorce—she accepted only when she realized that she could not escape it. That her graciousness and her kindly spirit smoothed Napoleon’s way in the difficult task of manufacturing a court and a nobility is unquestionable. But this was the service of a tactful woman of the world rendered to a husband, not of an Empress to her people. The French people indeed meant no more to her than her throne. They merely filled the background of the stage where she played her part. She was an Empress only in name, never in soul.
Autographs of Napoleon from 1785–1816[[3]]
In the year 1785, Napoleon left the Military School at Paris, and was admitted as a Second Lieutenant in the regiment of La Fère. At this time he signed like his father: “Buonaparte, younger son, gentleman, at the Royal Military School of Paris.”
Napoleon obtained a company in 1789, and in 1792 he was sent at the head of a battalion of Volunteer Infantry, which was to take part in an expedition against Sardinia. On returning from this expedition, he commanded the artillery at the siege of Toulon. His signature then was as follows: