The Court of the Empress Josephine

by Imbert de Saint-Amand

On his way, Napoleon had noticed on an island in the Rhine, at the very extremity of the French Empire, the convent of Rolandswerth. He was told that the nuns who lived there had refused to leave it during the last war, that very often the cannon-balls of the contending armies had often fallen on the island without damaging the convent where those holy women were praying. The Emperor became interested in their fate, and made over to them the forty or fifty acres of which the little island consisted.

On their arrival at Mayence, September 21, Napoleon Josephine were most warmly greeted. In the evening all the streets and public buildings were illuminated. The Prince Archchancellor of the Germanic Empire, who owed to the French sovereign the preservation of his wealth and of his title, desired to pay his respects. The Emperor was surrounded by a real court of German Princes. The Princess of the House of Hesse, the Duke and Duchess of Bavaria, the Elector of Baden, who was more than seventy-five years old, and had come with his son and grandson, appeared as if vassals of the new Charlemagne, the second Théâtre Français had been summoned from Paris, and played before this public of Highnesses. Every one was struck by the celerity with which this crowned soldier had acquired the appearance of a sovereign belonging to an old line, while he still preserved the language and appearance of a soldier. One day he asked the hereditary Prince of Baden: "What did you do yesterday?" The young Prince replied with some embarrassment that he had strolled about the streets. "You did very wrong," said Napoleon. "What you ought to have done was to visit the fortifications and inspect them carefully. How can you tell? Perhaps some day you will have to besiege Mayence. Who would have told me when I was a simple artillery officer walking about Toulon that I should be destined to take that city?" It was at Mayence that the treasures unjustly extorted from the German Princes were restored to them. It was at Mayence that Gutenberg's name for the first time received formal homage.

General de Ségur, In his Memoirs, narrates an anecdote about Napoleon's stay in this old German city. The Emperor had gone incognito and without escort to an island in the Rhine, not far from the town. As he was walking in this almost deserted island, he noticed a wretched hut in which a poor woman was lamenting that her son had been drafted. "Console yourself," said Napoleon, without letting her know who he was, and giving her an assumed name: "Come to Mayence to-morrow and ask for me; I have some influence with the ministers and I will try to help you." The poor woman appeared punctually. With delight and surprise she saw that the stranger was the Emperor of the French. Napoleon delighted to tell her that her house which had been destroyed by the war should be rebuilt, that he would give her a little herd and several acres of land, and that her son should be restored to her.

A letter in the Moniteur thus described the departure of Napoleon and Josephine: "Mayence, 11 Vendémiaire (October 3). The Empress left yesterday for Paris, by way of Saverne and Nancy. The Emperor is just leaving; he means to visit Frankenthal, Kaiserslanten, and Kreutznach; then he will take the road to Trèves. The stay of Their Majesties has been for us a source of lasting pleasure and advantage. The most important interests of our department have been favorably regulated. We have nothing now to wish for except an opportunity to show our gratitude, our devotion, and our fidelity, and the sincerity of the good wishes our citizens expressed by their unanimous cheers. The Electors, the Princes, and the many distinguished strangers who have given our city the appearance of a great capital, are now taking their departure."

This journey on the banks of the Rhine made a deep impression in France and throughout Europe. It must be confessed that no one has ever equalled the Emperor in the art of keeping himself picturesquely before the public. Napoleon in the crypt at Aix-la-Chapelle, face to face with the shade of Charlemagne is a subject to inspire a painter or a poet! At Brussels, in the church of Saint Gudule, Napoleon evoked the memory of Charles V.; at Aix-la-Chapelle in the Cathedral vault he questioned the shade of Charlemagne. And as he meditated on the tomb of the Carlovingian hero, so now do monarchs on their way through Paris meditate in their turn over his tomb beneath the gilded dome of the Invalides. They go down into the crypt, look at the porch upheld by twelve great statues of white marble, each one commemorating a victory, at the mosaic pavement representing a huge crown with fillets, the sarcophagus of red granite from Finland, placed on a foundation of green granite from the Vosges. Then they enter the subterranean chamber, the black marble sanctuary, which contains, among numerous relics, the sword that Napoleon carried at Austerlitz, the decorations he wore on his uniform, the gold crown voted him by the city of Cherbourg, and finally sixty flags won in his victories. The church of the Invalides Inspires the same thoughts as the Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle. In the two temples kings and great men may make the same reflection about glory, about death, about the handful of dust which is all that is left of heroes.

III.

THE POPE'S ARRIVAL AT FONTAINEBLEAU.

The time for the coronation was drawing near. Napoleon, who had already received the official recognition of foreign powers, was anxious to have his Imperial title consecrated by a great religious ceremony, the fame of which should resound throughout the whole Catholic world. The first date proposed for the solemnity was the 26th Messidor, Year XII. (July 14, 1804), then that of the 18th Brumaire, Year XIII. (Nov. 9, 1804). But the choice in each case was unfortunate. It was hard to combine the memory of the taking of the Bastille with the coronation of a sovereign, and the 18th Brumaire would have recalled the regrets of Republicans and the services of Lucien Bonaparte, who, after being the main aid of his brother's fortune, was living at Rome, in disgrace and exile. On the other hand, the Pope's hesitation, for it was with the greatest difficulty that he could make up his mind to go to Paris, had further postponed the date, which was at last fixed for the beginning of December.

Josephine awaited with impatience and fear an event on which, she felt, her future fate depended. The Pope, that mysterious and holy person, had started. Was he to prove her saviour? Was she to be a repudiated wife or a crowned Empress? The clergy were untiring in their laudations of Napoleon's glory. Bishops, in their charges, spoke of him as God's elect. One prelate, speaking of the Empire, had said: "One God and one monarch! As the God of the Christians is the only one deserving to be adored and obeyed, you, Napoleon, are the only man worthy to rule the French!" Another had said: "Napoleon, whom God called from the deserts of Egypt, like another Moses, will bring peace between the wise Empire of France and the divine Empire of Christ. The finger of God is here. Let us pray the Most High to protect with his powerful hand the man he has chosen. May the new Augustus live and rule forever! Submission is his due because he is ordered by Providence!" Yet in spite of these extravagant outbursts which came from every pulpit in the whole French Empire, this restorer of the altars, this saviour of religion was married only by civil right! From the ecclesiastic point of view, he was living in concubinage. He had had his brother Louis's marriage with Hortense de Beauharnais, and his sister Caroline's with Murat blessed by Cardinal Caprara, but in spite of Josephine's entreaties, he had denied her this pious satisfaction. It was on the Pope that the Empress put all her hope; she thought that he would take pity on her, and by bringing her into conformity with the rules of the church, would put an end to a condition of things humiliating to her as a sovereign, and painful to her as a Catholic.

At the same time Josephine was anxiously wondering whether she was to be crowned. Her brothers-in-law became more venomous in their intrigues against her, and desired not only that she be excluded from any part in the coronation, but also that she should be condemned to divorce on the pretext of barrenness. Joseph Bonaparte was never tired of saying that Napoleon ought to marry some foreign Princess, or at least some daughter of an old French family, and he skilfully laid stress on his own unselfishness in urging a plan which would necessarily remove himself and his descendants from the line of inheritance. The Emperor's sisters showed the same hostility towards Josephine, whom they hated, although she well deserved their love. Since Napoleon maintained an absolute silence about his intentions concerning the coronation, the Bonapartes already imagined that she was going to be divorced, and hence exhibited an untimely delight which displeased the Emperor and brought him closer to his wife. At last, tired with family bickerings, he suddenly put an end to them and filled Josephine with joy by telling her that she was to be crowned at Notre Dame.