"2. You will then make it clear, as if it were a remark of your own, that if no secondary consideration, no prejudice, influence the Emperor's decision, there are laws which he will always obey. His Majesty will never force a beloved daughter to a marriage which she might abhor, and will never consent to a marriage not in conformity with the principles of our religion.
"3. You will endeavor, moreover, to get a definite statement of the advantages which France would offer to Austria in the case of a family alliance."
When, in the evening of February 6, 1810, Napoleon's Minister of Foreign Affairs asked Prince Schwarzenberg if he was ready to sign the marriage contract at the Tuileries the next morning, the Ambassador was delighted, but surprised, and perhaps, for a moment, perplexed. If he regarded the instructions conveyed in the despatch of December 25, 1809, he certainly had no authority to sign anything. In fact, not merely did he not know whether the Archduchess had given her consent, he did not know whether she had ever been informed of the projected marriage. Besides, he had no information as to the way in which the Austrian court looked on the annulment of the religious marriage of Napoleon and Josephine by the officials of the diocese of Paris, who had acted independently of the Pope. Finally, he was not in condition to stipulate for any political advantage to his government as the price of the alliance. A timid diplomatist would have hesitated. But might not there arrive the next moment a courier from Saint Petersburg, bringing a definite answer from the Czar? Would Napoleon, impatient as he was and unused to delay—would he accept the slightest postponement on the part of Austria? Prince Schwarzenberg burned his ships; he said to himself that if his action were disavowed, he could go and raise cabbages on his estate; but if it were approved, he would be at the top of the wave. Abandoning then the customary slowness and scruples of diplomacy, he answered without hesitation that he was ready, and made an engagement with the Duke of Cadore, Minister of Foreign Affairs, for the next day, at the Tuileries, to sign the marriage contract of the Emperor of the French, King of Italy, and of Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria. IV.
THE BETROTHAL.
February 7, 1810, M. Champagny, Duke of Cadore, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Prince Charles of Schwarzenberg, met at the Tuileries, and signed, without the slightest hitch, the marriage contract of Napoleon and the Archduchess Marie Louise. The text was a copy almost word for word of Marie Antoinette's marriage contract, which had been signed forty years before.
On leaving the Tuileries, Prince Schwarzenberg despatched a messenger to Vienna to announce the momentous news, which possibly would arouse more surprise than delight. "Count," he wrote to M. de Metternich, "in signing the marriage contract, while protesting that I was in no way clothed with power ad hoc, I believe that I have merely signed a paper which can guarantee to the Emperor Napoleon the determination already formed by my August Sovereign of meeting him half-way in negotiation on this subject. The despatches with which you have honored me made the course that I was to follow perfectly clear. His Majesty, as Your Excellency assures me, approves of my conduct by bidding me follow the same course; hence the marriage is an affair which my government naturally regards as one of the greatest interest, and one which it desires to see arranged. It will be evident to those who know the character of Emperor Napoleon that if I had shown the slightest hesitation, he would have abandoned this plan and have formed another. If this affair was hurried, it was because that is the way in which Napoleon acts, and it seemed to me best to seize the favorable moment. I have the most profound conviction of having been of service to my sovereign on this occasion; and if by any possibility I have had the misfortune to displease him by the course that I took in perfect sincerity, His Majesty can disavow it, but in that case I shall instantly demand my recall."
The next day Prince Schwarzenberg sent to Vienna one of his secretaries, M. de Floret, with this letter to M. de Metternich: "Paris, February 8, 1810. I send to you, dear Count, M. de Floret, who will give you an account of everything that has happened. You will soon see that I could not have acted otherwise without spoiling the whole business. If I had insisted on not signing, he would have broken the affair off, to treat with Russia or Saxony. I formally declared that I had full power to give the most positive assurances that the propositions of marriage would be favorably received by my court; but that if I was not ready to sign a contract, it was only on account of the impossibility in which my minister found himself of supposing that a matter scarcely touched upon should so soon come to a head. I beg of you, my dear friend, to arrange that there shall be no obstacle to this important business, and that it be arranged with a good grace…. I pity the Princess, it is true; but yet she must not forget that it is a noble deed to give peace to such good nations, and to give a guarantee of general peace and tranquillity. Floret will give you our records, and will explain it to you by word of mouth; we have not had time to have it copied. You will not object to this, inasmuch as we wish Floret to leave at once. Conclude this matter nobly, and you will render an incalculable service to our country."
At the diplomatic reception which was held at the Tuileries, February 8, Napoleon walked up to the Austrian Ambassador and said to him, in the most friendly way, "You have been very busy lately, and I think you have done a good piece of work." Prince Kourakine, the Russian Ambassador, was much annoyed at the turn events had taken, and did not attend the reception, under the pretext that he was not well. The evening before Prince Schwarzenberg had dined at the house of Napoleon's mother with the King of Holland, Louis Bonaparte, who was loudspoken in his praise of the Emperor Francis and the Imperial house of Austria. At the court of the Tuileries there was general satisfaction. Napoleon thought that he had never achieved a greater triumph. The messenger whom Prince Schwarzenberg had despatched on the day he had signed the contract, reached Vienna February 14. The populace had not the faintest idea of the possibility of a marriage between the Archduchess Marie Louise and the Emperor of the French; the Austrian monarch and M. de Metternich, in their anxiety to keep their secret, lest some opposition should manifest itself, had not breathed a word about the overtures made at Vienna by Count Alexandre de Laborde, and at Malmaison by the Empress Josephine. Neither the Viennese nor the Diplomatic Body suspected anything. As M. de Metternich put it, Count Shouvaloff, the Russian Ambassador at the Austrian court, was literally petrified. The English breathed fire and flame. The sudden outburst of a volcano would not have been more startling than this piece of news which came from a clear sky. The impression made upon the populace was one of surprise which amounted to disbelief. People stopped in the streets to ask one another if the thing was possible.
Marie Louise had given her consent more with resignation than with pleasure. Metternich recounts in his Memoirs his speech to Francis II.: "In the life of a state, as in that of a private citizen, there are cases in which a third person cannot put himself in the place of one who is responsible for the resolutions he has to take. These cases are especially such as cannot be decided by calculation. Your Majesty is a monarch and a father; and Your Majesty alone can weigh his duties as father and emperor." "It is my daughter who must decide," answered Francis II. "Since I shall never compel her, I am anxious, before I consider my duties as a sovereign, to know what she means to do. Go find the Archduchess, and then let me know what she says. I am unwilling to speak to her of the demand of the French Emperor, lest I should seem to be trying to influence her decision."
M. de Metternich betook himself at once to the Archduchess Marie Louise, and set the matter before her very simply and briefly, without beating about the bush, without a word for or against the proposition. The Archduchess listened with her usual calmness, and, after a moment's reflection, asked him, "What are my father's wishes?" "The Emperor," the minister answered, "has commissioned me to ask Your Imperial Highness what decision she means to take in a matter concerning her whole life. Do not ask what the Emperor wishes; tell me what you yourself wish." "I wish only what my duty commands me to wish," answered Marie Louise. "When the interests of the Empire are at stake, they must be consulted, not my feelings. Beg of my father to regard only his duty as a sovereign, without subordinating it to my personal interests."