To Milan came the ambassadors of princes, of the free cities, and of the Italian republics. They all claimed Bonaparte’s assistance and protection; they came bearers of good-will, of utterances of hope and fear, and expecting from him help and succor. The princes trembled for their thrones; the cities and republics for their independence; they wanted to conciliate by their submission the general whose sword could either threaten them all or give them ample protection. Bonaparte received this homage with the composure of a protector, and sometimes also with the proud reserve of a conqueror.
He granted to the Duke of Parma the protection which he had sought, and permitted him to remain on his territory as prince and ruler, though the strongest expostulations had been made to Bonaparte on that point.
“He is a Bourbon,” they said; “he must no longer rule.”
“He is an unfortunate man,” replied Bonaparte, proudly; “it is not worth while to attack him. If we leave him on his lands, he will rule only in our name; if we drive him away, he will be weaving intrigues everywhere. Let him remain where he is, I wish him no wrong; his presence can be useful, his absence would surely he hurtful.”
“But he is a Bourbon, citizen general, a Bourbon!” exclaimed Augereau, with animation.
Bonaparte’s countenance darkened, and his brow was overspread with frowns. “Well, then,” cried he, with threatening tone, “he is a Bourbon! Is he therefore by nature of so despicable a family? Because three Bourbons have been killed in France, must we therefore hunt down all the others? I cannot approve of proscriptions which thus fall upon a whole family, a whole class of people. An absurd law has prohibited all the nobles from serving the republic, and yet Barras is in the Directory, and I am at the head of the army in Italy. We are consequently liable to punishment in virtue of your absurd and cruel system! Hunt down those who do wrong, but not masses who are innocent. Can you punish Paris and France for the crimes of the sans-culottes? The Bourbons are, it is said, the enemies of freedom; they have been led to the scaffold under the action of a right which I do not acknowledge. The Duke of Parma is weak, and a poltroon,—he will not stir. His people seem to love him, for we are here, and they rise not, they utter no complaint. Let him, then, continue to rule as long as he pays all that I exact from him.” [Footnote: Napoleon’s words.—See Hazlitt, “Histoire de Napoleon,” vol. v., p. 1.]
Thanks to the good-will and protection of the republican general, the Duke of Parma remained on his little throne—on the same throne which was one day to be to Napoleon’s second wife a compensation for her lost imperial crown. The Empress of France was to become a Duchess of Parma; and now to her husband, the present general of the republic, the actual Duke of Parma was indebted that his little dukedom was not converted into a republic.
It is true that the duke had to pay dearly for the protection which Bonaparte granted. He had to pay a war-subsidy of two million francs, and, besides, give from his collection his most beautiful painting, that of St. Jerome by Correggio, for the Museum of the Louvre in Paris. [Footnote: This splendid picture is now in the Vatican at Rome.] The duke, as a lover of art, was more distressed at the loss of this picture than at the enormous contribution he had to pay; for he soon caused the proposition to be made to General Bonaparte, to redeem from the French government that painting, for the sum of two hundred thousand francs, a proposition which Bonaparte, without any further consultation with the authorities in Paris, rejected with some degree of irritation.
The Duke of Parma remained therefore the sovereign of his duchy, because it so pleased Bonaparte; but Bonaparte was led into error when he thought that, as his people rebelled not, they therefore loved their duke, and were satisfied with him. The women and the priests controlled entirely the feeble duke; and not only the people, but the better classes and the aristocracy, submitted to all this with great unwillingness. Once, when Joseph Bonaparte, whom the French republic had sent to give assurance of protection and recognition to the little Duke of Parma, was walking with a few cavaliers in the gardens around the duke’s palace in Colorno, he expressed his admiration at the symmetry and beauty of the buildings.
“That is true,” was the answer, “but just look at the buildings of the neighboring cloister! do you not see how superior that dwelling is to that of the sovereign? Wretched is the country where this can take place!” [Footnote: “Memoires du Roi Joseph,” vol. i., p. 65.]