The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by J. G. Lockhart

There is now no doubt that, as early as the conferences of Tilsit, the scheme of such a connection with the imperial family of Russia was broached; and as little that Alexander treated the proposal with coldness, in consequence of the insuperable aversion with which the empress-mother (a princess whose influence was always commanding) persisted in regarding the character of Buonaparte. At Erfurt this matter was once more touched upon; and a second rejection of his personal alliance was probably the chief of not a few incidents at that meeting, which satisfied Napoleon as to the uncertain condition of his relations with the Russian court. Then, however, he had abundant reasons for dissembling his displeasure: and the pretext of difficulties arising from difference of religion was permitted to pass.

Fouché was one of the first to penetrate the secret thoughts of Buonaparte: and he, with audacity equal to his cunning, ventured to take on himself the dangerous office of sounding the Empress as to this most delicate of all subjects. One evening, before Napoleon left Paris on his unhallowed expedition to Spain, the minister of police drew Josephine aside into a corner of her saloon, and, after a preface of abundant commonplaces, touching the necessities of the empire and the painful position of the Emperor, asked her in plain terms whether she were not capable of sacrificing all private feelings to these? Josephine heard him with at least the appearance of utter surprise, ordered him to quit her presence, and went immediately to demand of Napoleon whether the minister had had any authority for this proceeding. The Emperor answered in the negative, and with high demonstrations of displeasure: but when Josephine went on to ask the dismissal of Fouché, as the only fit punishment for so great an outrage, he refused to comply. He remained steadfast, in spite of the urgencies and lamentations of an insulted woman; and from that hour Josephine must have felt that her fate was fixed.

The apartments of Napoleon, and those of his wife, which were immediately over them, at the Tuileries, had communication by means of a private staircase; and it was the custom of the Emperor himself to signify, by a tap on the door of Josephine's sitting-room, his desire to converse with her in his cabinet below. In the days of their cordial union the signal was often made, most commonly in the evening, and it was not unusual for them to remain shut up together in conversation for hours. Soon after his return from Schoenbrunn, the ladies in attendance began to remark that the Emperor's knock was heard more frequently than it had ever used to be, that their mistress seemed to listen for it at certain hours with a new and painful anxiety, and that she did not obey the signal with her accustomed alacrity. One evening Napoleon surprised them by carrying Josephine into the midst of them, pale, apparently lifeless. She was but awaking from a long swoon into which she had fallen on hearing him at last pronounce the decree which terminated their connection.

This was on the 5th of December. On the 15th the Emperor summoned his council, and announced to them, that at the expense of all his personal feelings, he, devoted wholly to the welfare of the state, had resolved to separate himself from his most dear consort. Josephine then appeared among them, and, not without tears, expressed her acquiescence in the decree. The council, after haranguing the imperial spouses on the nobleness of their mutual sacrifice, accepted and ratified the dissolution of the marriage. The title of Empress was to continue with Josephine for life, and a pension of two millions of francs (to which Napoleon afterwards added a third million from his privy purse) was allotted to her. She retired from the Tuileries, residing thenceforth mostly at the villa of Malmaison; and in the course of a few weeks it was signified that Napoleon had demanded the hand of the Archduchess Maria Louisa, daughter to the Emperor Francis, the same youthful princess who has been mentioned as remaining in Vienna, on account of illness, during the second occupation of that capital.

Having given her hand, at Vienna, to Berthier, who had the honour to represent the person of his master, the young archduchess came into France in March, 1810. On the 28th, as her carriage was proceeding towards Soissons, Napoleon rode up to it, in a plain dress, altogether unattended; and, at once breaking through all the etiquettes of such occasions, introduced himself to his bride. She had never seen his person till then, and it is said that her first exclamation was, "Your majesty's pictures have not done you justice." Buonaparte was at this time forty years of age; his countenance had acquired a certain fulness, and that statue-like calmness of expression with which posterity will always be familiar; but his figure betrayed as yet nothing more than a tendency towards corpulence. He was considered as a handsomer man at this period than he had been in her earlier days. They spent the evening at the chateau of Compiegne, and were remarried, on the 2nd of April, at Paris, amidst every circumstance of splendour. Among other imperial gallantries, Napoleon had provided a set of apartments at the Tuileries in which, down to the minutest article of furniture, Maria-Louisa found a facsimile of those which she had been accustomed to occupy in her father's palace of Schoenbrunn. For some time he seemed to devote himself, like a mere lover, to the society of his new partner; and was really, according to his own account at St. Helena, enchanted with the contrast which her youthful simplicity of character and manners presented to the finished and elaborate graces of Josephine. Of the uniform attachment and affection of both his wives, he spoke afterwards with equal praises. But he in vain endeavoured to prevail on Maria-Louisa to make a personal acquaintance with her predecessor; and, at length, found it necessary to give up his own visits to Malmaison, which for a time were not unfrequent.

Napoleon, in his exile, said that "the Spanish ulcer" and the Austrian match were the two main causes of his ruin;—and they both contributed to it largely, though by no means equally. His alliance with the haughtiest of the old sovereign houses gave deep offence indeed to that great party in France, who, though willing to submit to a Dictator, still loathed the name of hereditary monarchy. Nothing, perhaps, could have shocked those men more grievously than to see the victorious heir and representative of their revolution seeking to mix his blood with that of its inveterate enemies, and making himself free, as it were, of what they had been accustomed to call the old-established "corporation of tyrants." Another, and, it is to be hoped, as large a class of his subjects, were disgusted with his abandonment of the wife of his youth, for the sake of gratifying his vanity and ambition. There were also, we may easily believe, not a few royalists of the old school who had hitherto acquiesced in his sway the more easily, because he seemed destined to die childless, and in a contest for the throne of France, they flattered themselves the legitimate heir of the monarchy might outweigh any of his remoter kindred. And, lastly, it is not improvable that some of Napoleon's marshals had accustomed themselves to dream of events such as occurred on the death of Alexander the Great. But making all allowance for these exceptions, it is hardly possible to doubt that a vast proportion of the upper classes of society in France must have been disposed to hail the Emperor's alliance with the house of Austria, as a pledge of his desire to adopt, henceforth, a more moderate line of policy as to his foreign relations; or that his throne must have been strengthened in the eyes of the nation at large by the prospect—soon realised—of a son of his own blood to fill it after him. Napoleon's own opinion was, that the error lay, not in seeking a bride of imperial birth, but in choosing her at Vienna. Had he persisted in his demands, the Czar, he doubted not, would have granted him his sister; the proud dreams of Tilsit would have been realised, and Paris and St. Petersburg become the only two capitals of Europe.

The Emperor's new marriage was speedily followed by another event, which showed how little the ordinary ties and feelings of domestic life now weighed with him in the scale against ambition. His brother Louis, a weak, but benevolent man, had in vain been cautioned by Napoleon, on his promotion to the Dutch throne, that, in his administration of this subaltern monarchy, "the first object of his care must ever be the Emperor, the second France, and the third Holland." Louis, surrounded by native ministers, men of great talents and experience, and enlightened lovers of their country, had his sympathies ere long enlisted on the side of those whom he might be pardoned for wishing to consider as really his subjects. His queen, on the other hand, the daughter of Josephine, and the favourite of Napoleon, made her court, as far as she could, a French one, and was popularly regarded as heading the party who looked in all things to the Tuileries. The meek-spirited Louis, thwarted by this intriguing woman, and grossly insulted by his brother, struggled for some time with the difficulties of his situation; but his patience availed nothing: his supposed connivance at the violations of the Berlin and Milan decrees, in the same proportion as it tended to raise him more and more in the affections of the Dutch, fixed and heightened the displeasure of Napoleon. He was at length summoned to Paris, and without a moment's hesitation obeyed. On arriving there he took up his residence in the house of his mother, and next morning found himself a prisoner. Having abdicated his throne, Louis retired to Gratz, in Styria, and to that private mode of life for which his character fitted him: his name continues to be affectionately remembered in Holland. His beautiful wife, despite the fall of her mother, chose to fix her residence in Paris, where she once more shone the brightest ornament of the court. On the 9th of July, 1810, the kingdom of Holland was formally annexed to the French empire; Amsterdam taking rank among the cities next after Rome.

In pursuance of the same stern resolution to allow no consideration to interfere with the complete and effectual establishment of the "continental system," Buonaparte shortly afterwards annexed the Hanse towns, Oldenburg, and the whole sea-coast of Germany, from the frontier of Holland to that of Denmark, to the French empire. The King of Prussia was as yet in no condition to remonstrate against this new act of rapacity: opposition from any other German state was wholly out of the question.

In truth there had been, for several years, but one power in the North of Europe at once decidedly adverse in spirit, and in any degree independent; and now, to all appearance, this last exception also was removed. Gustavus IV., King of Sweden, had persisted in his original hatred of the French Revolution, and of Buonaparte, in opposition to a powerful party in that country, who considered the conduct of their sovereign, in standing out against so gigantic an enemy, as mere obstinacy—in fact as insane. In consequence of his pertinacious refusal to submit to the supreme will of Napoleon, the Pomeranian provinces and Finland had been lost to the kingdom. The monarch's personal behaviour unfortunately was so extravagant as to furnish some grounds for suspecting him of mental aberration. He was arrested in his palace, and, an act of abdication for himself and his children being extorted, deposed: his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was called to the throne in his room, as Charles XIII.; and, amicable relations being soon established between the Courts of Stockholm and the Tuileries, Pomerania was restored, and the English flag and commerce banished from the ports of Sweden in December, 1809.

In May, 1810, the Prince of Augustenburg, who had been recognised as heir to Charles XIII., died suddenly: and the choice of a successor was, according to the Constitution of Sweden, to depend on the vote of the Diet, which assembled accordingly as Orebro, in the month of August following.