The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise

by Imbert de Saint-Amand

"My Brother,—The delicate way in which Your Imperial Majesty has fulfilled my wishes by sending me the portrait of the Empress, your dear wife, lends a new value to the letter you have written to me. I hasten to give expression to the joy which I feel in seeing the features of my beloved daughter, which seem to add to a perfect likeness the merit of expressing her happiness in a congenial marriage."

The Countess of Montesquiou, a most worthy woman, was appointed Governess of the Imperial children, with two assistants, Mesdames de Mesgrigny and de Boubers, and later a third, Madame Soufflot. A nurse was chosen,—a sturdy, healthy woman, wife of a joiner at Fontainebleau; and two cribs were prepared,—a blue one for a prince, a pink one for a princess. The baby-linen, which was valued at three hundred thousand francs, aroused the admiration of all the ladies of the court.

In January and February, 1811, Marie Louise still went about. She drove to the hunt in the forest of Vincennes, in that of Saint Germain, and at Versailles. She used to walk in the Bois de Boulogne with Napoleon. Towards the middle of February great preparations began to be made for the happy event. Dr. Dubois was installed at the Tuileries, in the apartments of the Grand Marshal of the Palace, and the Duchess of Montebello, lady-in-waiting, took up her quarters in the palace. Marie Louise, who had gone to a fancy ball at the Duchess of Rovigo's, February 10, was present on the 25th at a quiet ball given at the Tuileries, at which were present only two strangers,—Prince Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Ambassador, and Prince Leopold of Coburg.

March 5 Count Frochot, Prefect of the Seine, came to the Tuileries, at the head of the Municipal Council, to present, in the name of the city of Paris, a magnificent red cradle, shaped like a ship, the emblem of the capital. This cradle, a real masterpiece, had been designed by Prudhon the artist, and is now in the Imperial Treasury of Vienna, to which it was given by the King of Rome when Duke of Reichstadt. The ornamentation, which is in mother-of-pearl and vermilion, is set on a ground of orange-red velvet. It is formed of a pillar of mother-of-pearl, on which are set gold bees, and is supported by four cornucopias, near which are set the figures of Force and Justice. At the top there is a shield with the Emperor's initials, surrounded by three rows of ivy and laurel. A figure representing Glory overhanging the world, holds a crown, in the middle of which shines Napoleon's star. A young eagle at the foot of the cradle is gazing at the conqueror's star, with wings spread as if about to take flight. A curtain of lace, covered with stars and ending in rich gold embroidery, hangs over each side.

When Marie Louise's walks were limited to the terrace of the Tuileries, by the side of the sheet of water that bounds the garden, a small doorway with an iron grating was thrown open into the first floor of the palace, to make easier her access to the spot. Around the grating the crowd used to gather to watch the Empress and respectfully to offer her their best wishes.

At nine o'clock in the evening of March 19th, 1811, the great bell of Notre Dame and all the church bells sounded, bidding the faithful spend the night in prayer and to invoke the blessings of Heaven on their Empress and the child which was about to enter the world. With Marie Louise there were M. Dubois, the Duchess of Montebello, the Countess of Luçay, Mesdames Durand and Ballant, ladies-in-waiting, ladies of the bedchamber, etc., and Madame Blaise. The Emperor, his mother and sisters, and two physicians, Drs. Corvisart and Bourdier, were in the next room. Napoleon kept going in and out of his wife's chamber, encouraging her with kind and cheery words. At five in the morning Dubois thought that the birth was not immediate, and the Emperor sent away the princesses, and, tired out by anxiety and his prolonged watch, went to take a bath. But Dubois soon found that he was mistaken, and ran to get Napoleon. He was trembling with anxiety when he burst open the door of the Emperor's room, finding him in his bath, and told him that he feared that he should not be able to save both the mother and the child. "Come, come, Mr. Dubois," exclaimed Napoleon, "don't lose your head; save the mother; think only of the mother…. Imagine she's some shopkeeper's wife in the Rue Saint Denis, that's all I ask of you; and, in any case,—I repeat it,—save the mother…. I shall be with you in a moment." Thereupon he sprang out of his bath, threw himself into a dressing-gown, and hastened to Marie Louise's bedside. He found her in great suffering, and grew very pale. Never on the field of battle had he displayed such emotion; but he tried to hide his anguish, and kissed his wife very gently, reassuring her with tender words. But, unable to control himself, and fearful of adding to her already excessive alarm, he hurriedly went into the next room, and there, listening to every sound, as pale as death, trembling from head to foot, he passed a quarter of an hour in intense anxiety. At last, and with difficulty, the child was born; at first it was supposed to be dead, and for seven minutes it gave no sign of life. The Emperor hastened to Marie Louise and kissed her most tenderly. He thought only of her; he did not give a look to the child. He had decided to care for nothing if only the Empress was saved. A few drops of brandy were poured into the prince's mouth; he was gently slapped all over and wrapped in hot towels, and he came to life with a little cry. Napoleon, wild with joy, kissed him. The thought that he had a son filled him with rapture such as none of his triumphs had given him. "Well, gentlemen," he said, when he went back to his own room, "we have got a fine, healthy boy. We had to urge him a little, to persuade him to come, but there he is at last!" And then he added, with deep emotion: "My dear wife! What courage she has, and how she has suffered! I had rather never have any more children than see her suffer so much again."

All this while the people of Paris were in a state of expectancy, wondering whether the child was to be a boy or a girl. If a boy, he would have a fine-sounding name. According to a decree calling the Eternal City the second city of the French Empire, which had become the capital of a simple department,—the department of the Tiber,—and in accordance with old usages of the Holy German Empire, by which the prince destined to succeed the Germanic Caesar, was called King of the Romans before bearing the title of Emperor, Napoleon's son was to be called the King of Rome. But would Napoleon have a son? Would Heaven crown his unexampled prosperity with this new favor? That was the subject of conversation everywhere, in the grandest mansions as in the humblest garrets. From daybreak of March 20th the Tuileries garden was crowded with people of all ages and conditions. The courtyards and quays were thronged. In the garden, along the terrace, in front of the palace, a rope was stretched from the grating by the Pont Royal to the Pavilion de l'Horloge. The crowd was so fearful of disturbing the Empress that this frail barrier, this simple rope, was more respected than would have been a lofty wall. The assemblage, which had been growing ever since six o'clock, remained at some distance from the rope, and only spoke in a low voice. They waited in extreme impatience, yet in perfect quiet, for the sound of the cannon of the Invalides. If it was a girl, only twenty-one guns would be fired; if a boy, there would be a hundred and one…. Every window was opened; in the squares and streets everything stood still,—foot-passengers, horses, carriages. The cannon of the Invalides was heard, and the anxious multitudes in deep emotion began to count, at first very low, but gradually louder—one, two, three, four, and so on up to twenty. Then the excitement was tremendous. Twenty-one. Is that all? No; there is the twenty-second, and the rest of the hundred and one are to follow; but there was no more need of counting: Napoleon had a son! At once the enthusiasm of the multitude broke forth like a volcano. Cheers, hats tossed in the air, loud cries of joy, universal, noisy delight, what a sight for the Emperor, as he stood at one of the Empress's windows, gazing in silence at the rapturous crowd! Tears flowed down his cheeks. "Never had his glory brought a tear to his eyes," Constant informs us; "but the happiness of fatherhood softened this soul which the most brilliant victories, the sincerest tributes of public adoration, had left untouched. Indeed, if Napoleon ever had reason to believe in his good fortune, it was on the day when the Archduchess of Austria made him the father of a king, him who had begun as the younger son of a Corsican family. In a few hours the event which France and Europe had been awaiting was a festival in every family."

At half-past ten the aeronaut, Madame Blanchard, set forth in a balloon from the Champ de Mars, to throw down papers announcing the great news to the populace. The telegraph, unimpeded by any mist,—for it was a lovely spring day,—began to work in every direction, and by two o'clock answers had been received from Lyons, Brussels, Antwerp, Brest, and other large towns of the Empire. All of course gave expression to the wildest enthusiasm. In the course of the day Napoleon wrote to his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, to inform him of the happy event. "These are very good letters," he said; "I have never written better ones." Officers of the Emperor's household, pages, and couriers were despatched with letters and messages for the great bodies of the State, for the towns and cities, for the Ambassadors and Ministers of France and other powers. The Empress Josephine was not forgotten; Napoleon sent a page to her in her castle of Navarre, in Normandy.

On the very day of his birth the King of Rome was privately christened at nine o'clock in the evening, in the chapel of the Tuileries, surrounded by his family and the court; the Emperor took his place in the middle of the chapel, on a chair with a prayer desk before it, beneath a canopy. Between the altar and the rail, on a granite base covered with white velvet, had been set a superb vermilion vase which served for the baptismal font. When Napoleon approached to present his son, there was a moment of religious silence, which contrasted with the noisy gayety of the vast crowd which had gathered near the Tuileries from every quarter of the city to see the fireworks and the magnificent illumination. "The houses," Constant says in his Memoirs, "were illuminated voluntarily. Those who try to make out from the outside appearance the real thoughts of a people on occasions like this, observed that the highest stories in the remotest quarters were as bright as the most sumptuous mansions. The public buildings, which are generally most brilliant in contrast with the darkness of the neighboring houses, now were scarcely to be distinguished in the profusion of lights which the rejoicing public had set in every window. The boatmen improvised a festival which lasted nearly all night, and attracted a huge and happy crowd to the banks of the river. The populace who had been through so many emotions, had celebrated so many victories in the last thirty years, displayed as much enthusiasm as if this were the first of its festivities in honor of a happy change in its destiny,"

March 22, Napoleon received in the throne-room at the Tuileries the great bodies of the State.