“You must separate from the Empress Josephine. A princess of the blood of the Cæsars will esteem it a glory to give heirs to the great Napoleon. Then will his dynasty be established forever.”
The divorce in 1809 was brought about by the joint efforts of all the members of the Bonaparte family, aided by some of Napoleon’s most confidential servants, whom Josephine, either as Madame Bonaparte, or empress, had failed to make her friends, notwithstanding her ceaseless endeavors to harmonize all the hostile elements around her. Even as early as the time when Napoleon was in Egypt, these intriguers first tried to lay snares for the unsuspicious and magnanimous Josephine, and various scandals were originated and reported to the absent Bonaparte.
Junot was made their tool either willingly or unwillingly, and the evil whispers became louder and louder. During the first months of the Egyptian expedition, Bonaparte’s letters to his wife were affectionate and confiding. But the poison was soon at work, and the rumors which Junot had repeated to Bonaparte roused his jealous anger.
Poor Josephine knew naught of these dread scandals, until the letters received from her husband, accusing her of errors of which she was guiltless, stabbed her to the heart. Her appeals against these injurious aspersions were in accordance with her own noble nature. We can only quote a few lines from her letter to Napoleon:—
“Can it be possible, my friend? Is the letter indeed yours which I have just received? Scarcely can I give it credence, on comparing the present with those now before me, and to which your love gave so many charms! My eyes cannot doubt that those pages which rend my heart are too surely yours; but my soul refuses to admit that yours could have dictated those lines, which to the ardent joy experienced on hearing from you have caused to succeed the mortal grief of reading the expressions of a displeasure, the more afflicting to me that it must have proved a source of fearful pain to you.
“I am entirely ignorant in what I have offended, to create an enemy so determined to ruin my repose by interrupting yours; but surely it must be a great reason which can thus induce some one unceasingly to renew against me calumnies of such a specious nature as to be admitted, even for a moment, by one who hitherto has deemed me worthy of his entire affection and confidence.
“Oh, my friend! in place of lending an ear to impostors, who, from motives which I cannot explain, seek to ruin our happiness, why do you not rather reduce them to silence by the recital of your benefits to a woman whose character has never incurred the suspicion of ingratitude? On hearing what you have done for me and for my children, my traducers would be silent. Your conduct, admired as it has been throughout the whole of Europe, has in my heart but awakened deeper adoration of the husband who made choice of me, poor as I was, and unhappy. Every step which you take adds to the splendor of the name I bear—and is such a moment seized to persuade you that I no longer love you? What absurdity, or rather what vileness, on the part of your companions, jealous as they are of your marked superiority! I tremble when I think of the dangers which surround you. God knows when or where this letter may reach you. May it restore to you a repose which you ought never to have foregone, and more than ever give you an assurance, that while I live you will be dear to me as on the day of our last separation. Farewell, my only friend! Confide in me, love me, and receive a thousand tender caresses.”
This touching letter, from which we have only quoted a few lines, was probably not received by Bonaparte until after his return to France. And Napoleon returning to Paris found Josephine absent, for she had started to meet him in wild impatience to welcome him; but missing him on the road, he arrived home first and found his house deserted: but his mother, sisters, and sisters-in-law, and in short every member of his family, except Louis, who had attended Madame Bonaparte to Lyons, came to him immediately, and insinuated the basest scandals about his devoted wife, who was only absent because she had flown to meet him. But the impression made upon him by his deserted home and the false accusations of his family were profound and terrible; and nine years afterwards, when the tie between himself and Josephine was broken, he showed that he had not forgotten that time. From not finding his wife with his family, he inferred that she felt herself unworthy of his presence and feared to meet the man she had wronged; and he considered her journey to Lyons a mere pretence,—so cruelly had these evil slanderers blackened her lovely and devoted character. After the reconciliation which followed, Bonaparte seemed for a time to have forgotten these evil lies; but his family were intensely chagrined.
Madame Pauline Le Clerc was most vexed at the pardon which Napoleon had granted his wife. Bonaparte’s mother was also very ill-pleased, for she had never liked Josephine. Madame Bacchiocchi gave free vent to her ill-humor and disdain, and Bonaparte’s brothers were at open war with Josephine. No wonder that with such a host of evil-minded, envious relations, poor Josephine was most terribly maligned! Bonaparte’s brothers, desirous of obtaining entire dominion over Napoleon, strenuously endeavored to lessen the influence which Josephine possessed over him.
Napoleon would probably have adhered to his first idea of adopting Eugène de Beauharnais as his successor, had it not been for his own family, all eager for wealth and honors, all jealous of any favors shown to Josephine or her children, all of them constantly urging a divorce.