Napoleon was about leaving Schoenbrunn, to return to France, when, October 12, 1809, just as he was about to review his troops, he saw approaching him a young German, of suspicious appearance, who was at once arrested. This young man, whose name was Staaps, was the son of a Protestant pastor at Erfurt, and under his coat was found a large, sharp dagger, with which he said he had intended to kill the Emperor, in order to deliver Germany. The cool, calm replies of this determined fanatic, whom Napoleon himself examined, made a deep impression upon him. Might not this young German be the forerunner of numberless volunteers who were about to organize against France what they would consider a holy war? At the sight of this youth, who gave calm expression to unrelenting hatred, Napoleon—who did not venture to spare his life, although no criminal act had been committed—was moved by a painful feeling in which pity was mingled with surprise. He who had cost Germany such torrents of blood and tears was singularly astonished when at last he saw that Germany did not love him. Nothing is so repugnant to the great of the earth, and especially to conquerors, as the thought of death,—death, the only unconquerable foe! What, the first comer, a fool, a vulgar fanatic, can with a kitchen knife lay low the greatest hero, the most illustrious warrior, the mightiest king! At Regensberg, when he was wounded for the first time since he had begun his military career, the hero of so many battles perceived, and not without a pang, that he was not invulnerable. Before the corpse of the brave Marshal Lannes, who had had his two legs carried off by a cannon-ball at Esoling, he wrote very sadly to the Empress Josephine: "So everything ends!" And now he might himself have fallen by the hand of a poor, unknown student! As the Duchess of Abrantès wrote: "Death, which was always prowling about the Emperor in various forms, yet never daring to seize him, but always appearing to say, Take care! … was a prophecy, and a prophecy of evil." Napoleon began to reflect seriously. To audacity and the spirit of adventure there suddenly succeeded prudence and the need of self-preservation. The all-powerful Emperor said to himself at the moment of his triumph, that if he were to die without a direct heir, his vast Empire would fall to pieces, like that of Alexander the Great, and the unrivalled edifice, built at the price of so much toil and sacrifice, would be shattered.

The national historian has said: "In proportion as he lost the support of the public, Napoleon took pleasure in thinking that it was the lack of a future and not his own misdeeds that threatened his proud throne with premature fragility. The desire to make firm what he felt trembling beneath his feet, became his dominant passion, as if, with a new wife in the Tuileries, the mother of a male heir, the faults which had armed the whole world against him would be only causes without effects." And Thiers adds this reflection: "It would doubtless have been to his advantage to have had an undoubted heir; it would have been better, a hundred times better, to have been prudent and wise. Napoleon, who, despite his need of a son, could not, after Tilsit, at the very climax of his power and glory, make up his mind to sacrifice Josephine, at last came to a decision because he felt the Empire threatened, and he tried in a new marriage to secure the solidity which he should have tried to obtain by wise and moderate conduct."

Possibly even when at Schoenbrunn the conqueror already thought of asking for the hand of the young archduchess whose home this palace was. At any rate, it never crossed his mind that in the very room where he wove such proud visions, such far-reaching plans, his heir would die so sadly, the heir whom the daughter of the Germanic Caesars was to give to him. When he reappeared crowned with victory at Fontainebleau, October 26, 1809, Josephine felt that her fate was sealed. The immediate result of the battle of Wagram was the divorce.

III.

THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE WEDDING.

Austria had known terrible fears during the campaign of Wagram; it had asked anxiously, whether the Hapsburgs might not disappear from the list of crowned heads, like the Spanish Bourbons, or might not, like the Neapolitan Bourbons, be left to enjoy only part of their States. The peace which was signed at Vienna, October 14, 1809, had somewhat allayed these serious apprehensions, but the situation of Austria remained no less anxious and painful. As Prince Metternich has said in his curious Memoirs: "The so-called Peace of Vienna had enclosed the Empire in an iron circle, cutting off its communication with the Adriatic, and surrounding it from Brody, on the extreme northeast, towards Russia, to the southeastern frontiers toward the Ottoman Empire, with a row of states under Napoleon's rule, or under his direct influence. The Empire, as if caught in a vice, was not free to move in any direction; moreover, the conqueror had done all he could to prevent the defeated nation from renewing its strength; a secret article of the treaty of peace established one hundred and fifty thousand men as the maximum force of the Austrian army."

A still darker danger threatened the throne of the Hapsburgs; namely, the marriage, which was thought very probable and very near, of Napoleon with the sister of the Czar. Thus imprisoned between two vast empires, between that of the East and that of the West, as if between hammer and anvil, what would become of Austria, shorn of its territory and its strength?

There was but one chance, and a very faint one, of any defence against the dangers that threatened Austria, and that was, that the Viennese court might make the match which the Russian court was contemplating. Already, its matrimonial alliances had brought the country good fortune more than once, and it could not forget the famous maxim expressed in a Latin line—

"Bella gerant alii; tu felix Austria, nube!"
"Let others wage war; do you, happy Austria, marry!"

The last campaigns had been unfavorable to the Hapsburg dynasty; a marriage would set things to right.