The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise

by Imbert de Saint-Amand

It is not to be supposed, however, that Marie Louise was unhappy before the catastrophes that accompanied the fall of the Empire. It was in perfect sincerity that she wrote to her father in praise of her husband, and her joy was great when she gave birth to a child, who seemed a pledge of peace and of general happiness. Let us add that the Emperor never had an occasion to find fault with her. Her gentleness, reserve, and obedience formed the combination of qualities which her husband desired. He had never imagined an Empress more exactly to his taste. When she deserted him, he was more ready to excuse and pity her than to cast blame upon her. He looked upon her as the slave and victim of the Viennese court. Moreover, he was in perfect ignorance of her love for the Count of Neipperg, and no shadow of jealousy tormented him at Saint Helena. "You may be sure," he said a few days before his death, "that if the Empress makes no effort to ease my woes, it is because she is kept surrounded by spies, who never let my sufferings come to her ears; for Marie Louise is virtue itself." A pleasant delusion, which consoled the final moments of the great man, whose last thoughts were for his wife and son.

We fancy that the Emperor of Austria was sincere in the protestations of affection and friendship which he made to Napoleon shortly after the wedding. He then entertained no thoughts of dethroning or fighting him. He had hopes of securing great advantage from the French alliance, and he would have been much surprised if any one had foretold to him how soon he would become one of the most active agents in the overthrow of this son-in-law to whom he expressed such affectionate feelings. In 1811 he was sincerely desirous that the King of Rome should one day succeed Napoleon on the throne of the vast empire. At that time hatred of France had almost died out in Austria; it was only renewed by the disastrous Russian campaign. The Austrians, who could not wholly forget the past, did not love Napoleon well enough to remain faithful to him in disaster. Had he been fortunate, the hero of Wagram would have preserved his father-in-law's sympathy and the Austrian alliance; but being unfortunate, he lost both at once. Unlike the rulers of the old dynasties, he was condemned either to perpetual victory or to ruin. He needed triumphs instead of ancestors, and the slightest loss of glory was for him the token of irremediable decay; incessant victory was the only condition on which he could keep his throne, his wife, his son, himself. One day he asked Marie Louise what instructions she had received from her parents in regard to her conduct towards him. "To be wholly yours," she answered, "and to obey you in everything." Might she not have added, "So long as you are not unfortunate"?

But who at the beginning of that fatal year, 1812, could have foretold the catastrophes which were so near? When Marie Louise was with Napoleon at Dresden, did he not appear to her like the arbiter of the world, an invincible hero, an Agamemnon, the king of kings? Never before, possibly, had a man risen so high. Sovereigns seemed lost amid the crowd of courtiers. Among the aides-de-camp was the Crown Prince of Prussia, who was obliged to make special recommendations to those near him to pay a little attention to his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria. What power, what pride, what faith in his star, when, drawing all Europe after him, he bade farewell to his wife May 29, 1812, to begin that gigantic war which he thought was destined to consolidate all his greatness and to crown all his glories! But he had not counted on the burning of Moscow: there is in the air a zone which the highest balloons cannot pierce; once there, ascent means death. This zone, which exists also in power, good fortune, glory, as well as in the atmosphere, Napoleon had reached. At the height of his prosperity he had forgotten that God was about to say to him: Thou shalt go no further.

At the first defeat Marie Louise perceived that the brazen statue had feet of clay. Malet's conspiracy filled her with gloomy thoughts. It became evident that the Empire was not a fixed institution, but a single man; in case this man died or lived defeated, everything was gone. December 12, 1812, the Empress went to her bed in the Tuileries, sad and ill. It was half-past eleven in the evening. The lady-in-waiting, who was to pass the night in a neighboring room, was about to lock all the doors when suddenly she heard voices in the drawing-room close by. Who could have come at that hour? Who except the Emperor? And, in fact, it was he, who, without word to any one, had just arrived unexpectedly in a wretched carriage, and had found great difficulty in getting the palace doors opened. He had travelled incognito from the Beresina, like a fugitive, like a criminal. As he passed through Warsaw he had exclaimed bitterly and in amazement at his defeat, "There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous." When he burst into his wife's bedroom in his long fur coat, Marie Louise could not believe her eyes. He kissed her affectionately, and promised her that all the disasters recounted in the twenty-ninth bulletin should be soon repaired; he added that he had been beaten, not by the Russians, but by the elements. Nevertheless, the decadence had begun; his glory was dimmed; Marie Louise began to have doubts of Napoleon. His courtiers continued to flatter him, but they ceased to worship him. A dark cloud lay over the Tuileries. The Empress had but a few days to pass with her husband. He had been away for nearly six months, from May 29 till December 12, 1812, and he was to leave again April 15, 1813, to return only November 9. The European sovereigns could not have continued in alliance with him even if they had wished it, so irresistible was the movement of their subjects against him. After Leipsic everything was lost; that was the signal of the death struggle, which was to be long, terrible, and full of anguish. Europe listened in terror to the cries of the dying Empire. But it was all over. The sacred soil of France was invaded. January 25, 1814, at three in the morning, the hero left the Tuileries to oppose the invaders. He kissed his wife and his son for the last time. He was never to see them again. In all, Napoleon had passed only two years and eight months with Marie Louise; she had had hardly time enough to become attached to him. Napoleon's sword was broken; he arrived before Paris too late to save the city, which had just capitulated, and the foreigners were about to make their triumphal entrance. Could a woman of twenty-two be strong enough to withstand the tempest? Would she be brave enough, could she indeed remain in Paris without disobeying Napoleon? Was not flight a duty for the hapless sovereign? The Emperor had written to his brother, King Joseph: "In no case must you let the Empress and the King of Rome fall into the enemy's hands. Do not abandon my son, and remember that I had rather see him in the Seine than in the hands of the enemies of France. The lot of Astyanax, a prisoner among the Greeks, has always seemed to me the unhappiest in history." But, alas! in spite of the great Emperor's precautions, the King of Rome was condemned by fate to be the modern Astyanax, and Marie Louise was not as constant as Andromache.

The allied forces drew near, and there was no more time for flight. March 29, 1814, horses and carriages had been stationed in the Carrousel since the morning. At seven o'clock Marie Louise was dressed and ready to leave, but they could not abandon hope; they wished still to await some possible bit of good news which should prevent their leaving,—an envoy from Napoleon, a messenger from King Joseph. The officers of the National Guard were anxious to have the Empress stay. "Remain," they urged; "we swear to defend you." Marie Louise thanked them through her tears, but the Emperor's orders were positive; on no account were the Empress and the King of Rome to fall into the enemy's hands. The peril grew. Ever since four o'clock Marie Louise had kept putting off the moment of leaving, in expectation that something would turn up. Eleven struck, and the Minister of War came, declaring there was not a moment to lose. One would have thought that the little King of Rome, who was just three years old, knew that he was about to go, never to return. "Don't go to Rambouillet," he cried to his mother; "that's a gloomy castle; let us stay here." And he clung to the banisters, struggling with the equerry who was carrying him, weeping and shouting, "I don't want to leave my house; I don't want to go away; since papa is away, I am the master." Marie Louise was impressed by this childish opposition; a secret voice told her that her son was right; that by abandoning the capital, they surrendered it to the Royalists. But the lot was cast, and they had to leave. A mere handful of indifferent spectators, attracted by no other feeling than curiosity, watched the flight of the sovereign who, four years before, had made her formal entrance into this same palace of the Tuileries under a triumphal arch, amid noisy acclamations. There was not a tear in the eyes of the few spectators; they uttered no sound, they made no movement of sympathy or regret; there was only a sullen silence. But one person wept, and that was Marie Louise. When she had reached the Champs Elyseés, she cast a last sad glance at the palace she was never to see again. It was not a flight, but a funeral.

The Empress and the King of Rome took refuge at Blois, where there appeared a faint shadow of Imperial government. On Good Friday, April 8, Count Shouvaloff reached Blois with a detachment of Cossacks, and carried Marie Louise and her son to Rambouillet, where the Emperor of Austria was to join them. What Napoleon had feared was soon realized.

April 16, the Emperor of Austria was at Blois. Marie Louise, who two years before had left her father, starting on her triumphal journey to Prague, amid all form of splendor and devotion, was much moved at seeing him again, and placed the King of Rome in his arms, as if to reproach him for deserting the child's cause. The grandfather relented, but the monarch was stern: did he not soon say to Marie Louise: "As my daughter, everything that I have is yours, even my blood and my life; as a sovereign, I do not know you"? The Russian sentinels at the entrance of the castle of Rambouillet were relieved by Austrian grenadiers. The Empress of the French changed captors; she was the prisoner no longer of the Czar's soldiers, but of her own father. Her conjugal affection was not yet wholly extinct, and she reproached herself with not having joined Napoleon at Fontainebleau; but her scruples were soon allayed by the promise that she should soon see her husband again at Elba. She was told that the treaty which had just been signed gave her, and after her, her son, the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla; that the King of Rome was henceforth the hereditary Duke of Parma; that if she had duties as a wife, she also had duties as a mother; that she ought to gain the good-will of the powers, and assure her child's future. They added that she ought to give her husband time to establish himself at Elba, and that meanwhile she would find in Vienna, near her loving parents, a few weeks of moral and physical rest, which must be very necessary after so many emotions and sufferings. Marie Louise, who had been brought up to give her father strict obedience, regarded the advice of the Emperor of Austria as commands which were not to be questioned, and April 23 she left Rambouillet with her son for Vienna.

Did the dethroned Empress carry away with her a pleasant memory of France and the French people? We do not think so; and, to be frank, was what had just happened likely to give her a favorable idea of the country she was leaving? Could she have much love for the people who were fastening a rope to pull down the statue of the hero of Austerlitz from its pedestal, the Vendôme column? When her father, the Emperor Francis I., had been defeated, driven from his capital, overwhelmed with the blows of fate, his misfortunes had only augmented his popularity; the more he suffered, the more he was loved. But for Napoleon, who was so adored in the day of triumph, how was he treated in adversity? What was the language of the Senate, lately so obsequious and servile? The men on whom the Emperor had literally showered favors, called him contemptuously Monsieur de Bonaparte. What did they do to save the crown of the King of Rome, whose cradle they had saluted with such noisy acclamations? Were not the Cossacks who went to Blois after the Empress rapturously applauded by the French, in Paris itself, upon the very boulevards? Did not the marshals of the Empire now serve as an escort to Louis XVIII.? Where were the eagles, the flags, and the tricolored cockades? When Napoleon was passing through Provence on his way to take possession of his ridiculous realm of Elba, he was compelled to wear an Austrian officer's uniform to escape being put to death by Frenchmen; the imperial mantle was exchanged for a disguise. It is true that Marie Louise abandoned the French; but did not the French abandon her and her son after the abdication of Fontainebleau; and if this child did not become Napoleon II., is not the fault theirs? And did she not do all that could be demanded of her as regent? Can she be accused of intriguing with the Allies; and if at the last moment she left Paris, was it not in obedience to her husband's express command? She might well have said what fifty-six years later the second Emperor said so sadly when he was a prisoner in Germany: "In France one must never be unfortunate." What was then left for her to do in that volcano, that land which swallows all greatness and glory, amid that fickle people who change their opinions and passions as an actress changes her dress? Where Napoleon, with all his genius, had made a complete failure, could a young, ignorant woman be reasonably expected to succeed in the face of all Europe? Were her hands strong enough to rebuild the colossal edifice that lay in ruins upon the ground?

Such were the reflections of Marie Louise as she was leaving France. The moment she touched German soil, all the ideas, impressions, feelings of her girlhood, came back to her, and naturally enough; for were there not many instances in the last war, of German women, married to Frenchmen, who rejoiced in the German successes, and of French women, married to Germans, who deplored them? Marriage is but an incident; one's nature is determined at one's birth. In Austria, Marie Louise found again the same sympathy and affection that she had left there. There was a sort of conspiracy to make her forget France and love Germany. The Emperor Francis persuaded her that he was her sole protector, and controlled her with the twofold authority of a father and a sovereign. She who a few days before had been the Empress of the French, the Queen of Italy, the Regent of a vast empire, was in her father's presence merely a humble and docile daughter, who told him everything, obeyed him in everything, who abdicated her own free will, and promised, even swore, to entertain no other ideas or wishes than such as agreed with his.

Nevertheless, when she arrived at Vienna, Marie Louise had by no means completely forgotten France and Napoleon. She still had Frenchmen in her suite; she wrote to her husband and imagined that she would be allowed to visit him at Elba, but she perfectly understood all the difficulties of the double part she was henceforth called upon to play. She felt that whatever she might do she would be severely criticised; that it would be almost impossible to secure the approval of both her father and her husband. Since she was intelligent enough to foresee that she would be blamed by her contemporaries and by posterity, was she not justified in lamenting her unhappy lot? She, who under any other conditions would have been an excellent wife and mother, was compelled by extraordinary circumstances to appear as a heartless wife and an indifferent mother. This thought distressed Marie Louise, who at heart was not thoroughly contented with herself. She wrote, under date of August 9, 1814: "I am in a very unhappy and critical position; I must be very prudent in my conduct. There are moments when that thought so distracts me that I think that the best thing I could do would be to die."