On the 2d of June, the funeral honors were paid to the mortal remains of the Empress Josephine, in the parish church at Ruel. Commissioners from the sovereigns of Russia and Prussia headed the procession, which proceeded from Malmaison to Ruel. Many foreign princes, marshals, generals, and officers of the French and allied armies escorted the renowned remains.
The military consisted of Russian Hussars and the National Guards of France. The chief mourners were Prince Eugène, the Grand Duke of Baden, Marquis de Beauharnais (brother-in-law), Count de Tascher (nephew), Count de Beauharnais (cousin), and the grandchildren of the deceased empress.
The funeral oration was pronounced by the Archbishop of Tours, while the bishops of Evreux and Versailles assisted in the religious ceremonies. The body of the empress was enclosed in a leaden coffin, which was afterwards placed in one of sycamore wood covered with black cloth. The casket was deposited in a vault in the church at Ruel, over which was raised a chapelle ardente formed of funeral hangings; the altar, richly decorated in the form of a tomb, and the altar-piece, representing a cross, were surmounted by a canopy. On the right was placed a statue of Immortality, on the left that of Religion. A sepulchral lamp was suspended in the middle of the chapelle ardente.
Queen Hortense, who had been conveyed to the church before the funeral obsequies, knelt for a long time beside the tomb, with her brother, after the other mourners had left the church.
The spot is now marked by a monument of white marble, representing the empress kneeling in her coronation robes, and bears this simple and touching inscription:—
EUGÈNE AND HORTENSE TO JOSEPHINE.
The widow and the orphan went daily to weep by her tomb. Many of her faithful friends continued to make visits to the last resting-place of her whose memory was honored by universal respect and sincere mourning. The poor and the rich alike honored her life and mourned her death. “What now remains to Josephine is the recollection of her good deeds,”—a more fitting memorial than costly monument or marble sarcophagus of most elaborate art.
As an empress, none can claim a more exalted place, as the personification of grace, beauty, and queenly dignity. But it is as a woman—as a wife and a mother—that the brightest halo of glory crowns the pure brow of Josephine; and as Love’s Martyr, she has gained the highest place amongst the self-sacrificing women of historic fame.