It is both difficult and interesting to attempt to follow the history of the chief characters of the period; and the reader must pardon some abrupt transitions from person to person, and from group to group, while the details of some subsequent movements of the Bonaparte family must be thrown in to give a proper idea of the strange revolution in their fortunes. We may divide the characters with which we have to deal into five groups,—the Bonaparte family, the Marshals, the Statesmen of the Empire, the Bourbons, and the Allied Monarchs. One figure and one name will be missing, but if we omit all account of poor, bleeding, mutilated France, it is but leaving her in the oblivion in which she was left at the time by every one except by Napoleon.
The disaster of 1814 had rather dispersed than crushed the Bonaparte family, and they rallied immediately on the return from Elba. The final fall of the Empire was total ruin to them. The provisions of the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which had been meant to ensure a maintenance to them, had not been carried out while Napoleon was still a latent power, and after 1815 the Bourbons were only too happy to find a reason for not paying a debt they had determined never to liquidate it was well for any of the Bourbons in their days of distress to receive the bounty of the usurper, but there was a peculiar pleasure in refusing to pay the price promised for his immediate abdication.
The flight of the Bonapartes in 1815 was rapid. Metternich writes to Maria Louisa in July 1815: "Madame Mere and Cardinal Fesch left yesterday for Tuscany. We do not know exactly where. Joseph is. Lucien is in England under a false name, Jerome in Switzerland, Louis at Rome. Queen Hortense has set out for Switzerland, whither General de Flahault and his mother will follow her. Murat seems to be still at Toulon; this, however, is not certain." Was ever such an account of a dynasty given? These had all been among the great ones of Europe: in a moment they were fugitives, several of them having for the rest of their lives a bitter struggle with poverty. Fortunately for them the Pope, the King of Holland, and the Grand-Duke of Tuscany, were not under heavy obligations to Napoleon, and could thus afford to give to his family the protection denied them by those monarchs who believed themselves bound to redeem their former servility.
When Napoleon landed Maria Louisa was in Austria, and she was eager to assist in taking every precaution to prevent her son, the young King of Rome, being spirited off to join his father, whose fortunes she had sworn to share: She herself was fast falling under the influence of the one- eyed Austrian General, Neipperg, just then left a widower, who was soon to be admitted to share her bed. By 1823 she seemed to have entirely forgotten the different members of the Bonaparte family, speaking of her life in France as "a bad dream." She obtained the Grand-Duchy of Parma, where she reigned till 1847, marrying a third time, it is said, the Count Bombellea, and dying, just too soon to be hunted from her Duchy by the Revolution of 1848.
There is something very touching in most that we know of the poor young King of Rome, from his childish but strangely prescient resistance to his removal from Paris to Blois on the approach of the Allies in 1814, to the message of remembrance sent in after years to the column of the Place Vendome, "his only friend in Paris."
At four years of age Meneval describes him as gentle, but quick in answering, strong, and with excellent health. "Light curly hair in ringlets set off a fresh face, while fine blue eyes lit up his regular features: He was precociously intelligent, and knew more than most children older than himself." When Meneval—the former secretary of his father, giving up his post in Austria with Maria Louisa, as he was about to rejoin Napoleon—took farewell of the Prince in May 1815, the poor little motherless child drew me towards the window, and, giving me a touching look, said in a low tone, "Monsieur Meva, tell him (Napoleon) that I always love him dearly." We say "motherless," because Maria Louisa seems to have yielded up her child at the dictates of policy to be closely guarded as easily as she gave up her husband. "If," wrote Madame de Montesquiou, his governess, "the child had a mother, I would leave him in her hands, and be happy, but she is nothing like a mother, she is more indifferent to his fate than the most utter stranger in her service." His grandfather, the Emperor Francis, to do him justice, seems to have been really kind to the lad, and while, in 1814, 1816, and in 1830, taking care to deprive him of all chance of, his glorious inheritance, still seems to have cared for him personally, and to have been always kind to him. There is no truth in the story that the Austrians neglected his education and connived at the ruin of his faculties. Both his tutor, the Count Maurice Dietrichstein, and Marshal Marmont, who conversed with him in 1831, agree in speaking highly of him as full of promise: Marmont's evidence being especially valuable as showing that the Austrians did not object to the Duke of Reichstadt (as he had been created by his grandfather in 1818), learning all be could of his father's life from one of the Marshals. In 1831 Marment describes him: "I recognised his father's look in him, and in that he most resembled Napoleon. His eyes, not so large as those of Napoleon, and sunk deeper in their sockets, had the same expression, the same fire, the same energy. His forehead was like that of his father, and so was the lower part of his face and his chin. Then his complexion was that of Napoleon in his youth, with the same pallor and the same colour of the skin, but all the rest of his face recalled his mother and the House of Austria. He was taller than Napoleon by about three inches." `
As long as the Duke lived his name was naturally the rallying-point of the Bonapartes, and was mentioned in some of the many conspiracies against the Bourbons. In 1830 Joseph Bonaparte tried to get the sanction of the Austrians to his nephew being put forward as a claimant to the throne of France, vacant by the flight of Charles X., but they held their captive firmly. A very interesting passage is given in the 'Memoirs of Charles Greville', who says that Prince Esterhazy told him a great deal about the Duke of Reichstadt, who, if he had lived, would have probably played a great part in the world. He died of a premature decay, brought on, apparently, by over-exertion and over-excitement; his talents were very conspicuous, he was 'petri d'ambition', worshipped the memory of his father, and for that reason never liked his mother; his thoughts were incessantly turned towards France, and when he heard of the Days of July (overthrow of Charles X.) he said, "Why was I not there to take my chance? He evinced great affection and gratitude to his grandfather, who, while he scrupulously observed all his obligations towards Louis Philippe, could not help feeling a secret pride in the aspiring genius of Napoleon's son. He was well educated, and day and night pored over the history of his father's glorious career. He delighted in military exercises, and not only shone at the head of his regiment, but had already acquired the hereditary art of ingratiating himself with the soldiers." Esterhazy went on to describe how the Duke abandoned everything at a ball when he met there Marshals Marmont and Maison." He had no eyes or ears but for them; from nine in the evening to five the next morning he devoted himself to these Marshals." There was the true Napoleonic ring in his answer to advice given by Marmont when the Duke said that he would not allow himself to be put forward by the Sovereigns of Europe. "The son of Napoleon should be too great to serve as an instrument; and in events of that nature I wish not to be an advanced guard, but a reserve,—that is, to come as a succour, recalling great memories."
His death in 1832, on the 22d of July, the anniversary of the battle of Salamanca, solved many questions. Metternich visited the Duke on his deathbed: "It was a heartrending sight. I never remember to have seen a more mournful picture of decay." When Francis was told of the death of his grandson he answered, "I look upon the Duke's death as a blessing for him. Whether it be detrimental or otherwise to the public good I do not know. As for myself, I shall ever lament the loss of my grandson."
Josephine was in her grave at Rueil when Napoleon returned. She had died on the 29th of May 1814, at Malmaison, while the Allies were exhibiting themselves in Paris. It seems hard that she should not have lived to enjoy a triumph, however brief, over her Austrian rival. "She, at least," said Napoleon truly, "would never have abandoned me."
Josephine's daughter, Hortense, separated from her husband, Louis Bonaparte, and created Duchess of St Leu by Louis XVIII., was in Paris, much suspected by the Bourbons, but really engaged in a lawsuit with her husband about the custody of her sons. She had to go into hiding when the news of the landing arrived, but her empty house, left unwatched, became very useful for receiving the Bonapartists, who wished for a place of concealment, amongst them, as we shall see, being, of all people, Fouche! Hortense was met by Napoleon with some reproaches for accepting a title from the Bourbons, but she did the honours of the Elysee for him, and it is creditable to both of them that, braving the vile slanders about their intercourse, she was with him to the end; and that one of the last persons to embrace him at Malmaison before he started for the coast was his adopted daughter, the child of his discarded wife. Hortense's presence in Paris was thought to be too dangerous by the Prussian Governor; and she was peremptorily ordered to leave. An appeal to the Emperor Francis received a favourable answer, but Francis always gave way where any act against his son-in-law was in question, and she had to start at the shortest notice on a wandering life to Aix, Baden, and Constance, till the generosity of the small but brave canton of Thurgau enabled her to get a resting-place at the Chateau of Arenenberg.