Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, Vol. 2 of 2

by Madame de Rémusat

ET us suppose an individual, ignorant of all antecedent events, and suddenly introduced to the life of the palace at Fontainebleau at the time of which I am speaking. That individual, dazzled by the magnificence of this royal dwelling, and struck by the authoritative air of the master and the obsequious reverence of the great personages who surrounded him, would undoubtedly have believed that he beheld a sovereign peacefully seated upon the greatest throne in the world, in virtue of the joint rights of power and legitimacy.

Bonaparte was then king in the eyes of all and in his own eyes; he forgot the past, he did not fear the future. He walked with a firm step, foreseeing no obstacles, or at least certain that he could easily overthrow any which might arise. It appeared to him, it appeared to us, that he could not fall except by an event so unforeseen, so strange, and which would produce so universal a catastrophe, that all the interests of order and tranquillity were solemnly pledged to his support. He was either the master or the friend of all the continental kings. He was allied to several of them either by foreign treaties or by foreign marriages. He had made sure of Europe by the partitions which he had effected. He had strong garrisons upon his most distant frontiers to insure the execution of his will, and all the resources of France were placed absolutely in his hands. He possessed an immense treasury; he was in the prime of life, admired, feared, and scrupulously obeyed. Had he not then surmounted every obstacle?

For all this, a worm was gnawing at the vitals of his glory. The French Revolution was not a process by which the public mind was to be led to submit to arbitrary power; the illumination of the age, the progress of sound principles, the spread of liberty, were all against him, and they were destined to overthrow this brilliant edifice of authority, founded in opposition to the march of the human intellect. The sacred flame of liberty was burning in England. Happily for the welfare of nations, that sanctuary was defended by a barrier which the armies of Bonaparte could not break down. A few leagues of sea protected the civilization of the world, and saved it from being forced to abandon the field of battle to one who might not perhaps have utterly beaten it, but who would have stifled it for the space of a whole generation.

The English Government, jealous of so colossal a power, and, notwithstanding the ill success of so many enterprises, though always conquered, never discouraged, found an unfailing resource against the Emperor in the national sentiments. The pride and industry of England, attacked both in its position and its interests, were equally irritated, and the people consented eagerly to every sacrifice which was demanded of them. Large sums were voted for the augmentation of a naval service which should secure the blockade of the entire continent of Europe.

The kings who were afraid of our artillery submitted to the prohibitive system which we exacted of them, but their people suffered. The luxuries of life, the necessities created by prosperity, the innumerable wants which are the result of high civilization, all fought the battle of the English. Murmurs arose at St. Petersburg, on the Baltic, in Holland, in all the French ports; and the discontent which dared not express itself took all the deeper root in the public mind that it might be long before it could find a voice.

The threats or reproaches which we were suddenly made aware our Government was addressing to its allies were, however, indications of the true state of things. We in France were in complete ignorance of all that was passing outside of us, without communications (at least of an intellectual kind) with other nations, incredulous of the truth of the articles written to order in our dull journals; but, nevertheless, we were led by the line taken in the “Moniteur” to the conclusion that the Imperial will was balked by the necessities of the nation. The Emperor had bitterly reproached his brother Louis with a too feeble execution of his orders in Holland. He now sent him back to his kingdom with a positive injunction that his will was to be scrupulously obeyed.

“Holland,” said the “Moniteur,” “since the new measures taken there, will no longer correspond with England. English commerce must find the whole continent closed to it, and these enemies of the nations must be outlawed. There are peoples who know not how to do anything but complain; they must learn to suffer with fortitude, to take every means of injuring the common enemy and obliging him to recognize the principles which actuate all the continental nations. If Holland had taken her measures from the commencement of the blockade, perhaps England would have already made peace.”

At another time every effort was made to stigmatize what was called the invasion of continental liberties. The English Government was compared, in its policy, to Marat. “What did he ever do that was more atrocious?” was asked. “The spectacle of a perpetual war is presented to the world. The oligarchical ringleaders who direct English policy will end, as all exaggerated and infuriated men do end, by earning the opprobrium of their own country and the hatred of other nations.”

The Emperor, when dictating this and similar tirades against oligarchical governments, was using for his own purposes the democratic idea which he well knew existed in the nation. When he employed some of the revolutionary phrases, he believed that he was carrying out the principles of the Revolution. “Equality”—nothing but “Equality”—was the rallying-cry between the Revolution and him. He did not fear its consequences for himself; he knew that he had excited those desires which pervert the most generous dispositions; he turned liberty aside, as I have often said, he bewildered all parties, he falsified all meanings, he outraged reason. The power which his sword conferred upon him he sustained by sophistry, and proved that it was from motives of sound wisdom that he deviated from the path of progress and set aside the spirit of the time. He called the power of speech to his aid, and perverted language to lead us astray.

That which makes Bonaparte one of the most remarkable of human beings, which places him apart, and at the head of all those powerful men who have been called to rule over their fellows, is that he perfectly knew and always contended with his epoch. Of his own free will he chose a course which was at once difficult and contrary to the spirit of his time. He did not disguise this from himself; he frequently said that he alone had checked the Revolution, and that after him it would resume its course. He allied himself with the Revolution to oppress it; but he presumed too far upon his strength, and in the end the Revolution recovered its advantage, conquered and repulsed him.