Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, Vol. 2 of 2

by Madame de Rémusat

On the 25th of January the Court of Naples, under the pressure of a skillful and victorious enemy, embarked for Palermo, abandoning the capital to its new sovereign, who would soon take possession of it. Meanwhile the Emperor, having been present at the marriage of Prince Eugène on the 14th of January, left Munich, and, having received on his way through Germany the honors that were invariably offered him in every place, reached Paris on the night of the 26th to the 27th of January.

I have thought it well to conclude here the history of what was to me Bonaparte’s second epoch, because, as I said before, I look upon the close of this first campaign as the highest pitch of his glory; and for this reason, that now the French people again consented to bear their share in it.

Nothing, perhaps, in the history of circumstances and of men, can be compared to the height of power to which he attained after the peace of Tilsit; but, if at that time all Europe bent before him, the spell of victory had been strangely weakened in France, and our armies, although consisting of our own citizens, were beginning to be aliens to us.

The Emperor, who often appreciated things with mathematical accuracy, was well aware of this; for, on his return from concluding the above treaty, I heard him say, “Military glory, which lasts so long in history, is that which fades the quickest among its contemporaries. All our recent battles have not produced in France half the effect of the one victory of Marengo.”

Had he carried his reflections further, he would have seen that the people who are governed need eventually a glory that will be of solid use, and that admiration for that which bears but a barren brilliancy is soon exhausted.

In 1806 England was again accused, rightly or wrongly, of inciting enmity against us. Supposing her to be with justice jealous of our returning prosperity, we did not think it impossible that she might endeavor to molest us, even if we had in perfect good faith shown every sign of intended moderation. We did not think the Emperor had been the cause of the last rupture which had destroyed the treaty of Amiens; and, as it seemed impossible for a long time to come to compete with the naval power of the English, it did not appear to us to be politically wrong to endeavor to balance the weight which commerce gave to our enemies by the constitution given to Italy—that is, by a powerful influence on the Continent.

With such feelings as these, the marvels of this three months’ campaign could not fail to impress us deeply. Austria had been conquered; the united armies of the two greatest sovereigns of Europe had fled before ours; the Czar had retreated; the Emperor Francis had personally sued for peace—a peace as yet bearing signs of moderation; kings had been created by our victories; the daughter of a crowned sovereign had been given in marriage to a mere French gentleman; finally, the prompt return of the conqueror, which gave hopes of permanent peace, and perhaps also a desire to retain our illusions respecting our master—a desire inspired by human vanity, for men do not like to blush for him by whom they are ruled—all these things again roused national admiration, and were only too favorable to the ambition of the victor. The Emperor perceived the progress he had made in popularity, and he concluded, with some appearance of probability, that glory would make up to us for all the losses we were about to sustain at the hands of despotism. He believed that Frenchmen would not murmur were but their slavery brilliant, and that we would willingly barter all the liberty that the Revolution had so hardly won for us, for his dazzling military success.

Finally, and this was the worst, he saw in war a means of stifling the reflections which his mode of government was sure sooner or later to evoke, and he reserved it to dazzle us, or at least to reduce us to silence. As he felt himself perfectly master of the science of war, he had no fear of its results; and, when he could engage in it with such immense armies and such formidable artillery, he felt there was scarcely any danger to himself. Although in this I may be mistaken, I do believe that, after the campaign of Austerlitz, war was rather the result of his system than the gratification of his taste. The first, the real ambition of Napoleon was for power, and he would have preferred peace if it could have increased his authority. There is a tendency in the human mind to bring to perfection anything with which it is exclusively occupied. The Emperor, who was continually bent on increasing his power by every possible means, and who was becoming accustomed to the exercise of his own will on every occasion, became more and more impatient of the slightest opposition. The European phalanxes were gradually giving way before him, and he began to believe that he was destined to regulate the affairs of every continental kingdom. He looked with disdain on the progress of the age, regarding the French Revolution, which was so solemn a warning to sovereigns, only as an event whose results he might use to his own advantage; and he came to despise the cry for liberty which for twenty years had been uttered at intervals by the people. He was persuaded that he could, at any rate, trick them by accomplishing the destruction of what had existed, and replacing it by sudden creations, which would appear to satisfy that longing for equality which he believed with reason to be the ruling passion of the time.

He tried to turn the French Revolution into a mere freak of fortune, a useless disturbance which had merely upset individuals. How often has he not made use of these specious words, in order to allay apprehension: “The French Revolution need fear nothing, since the throne of the Bourbons is occupied by a soldier!” And at the same time he would assume toward kings the attitude of a protector of thrones—“for,” he would say, “I have abolished republics.” Meanwhile he was dreaming of I know not what half-feudal project, the execution of which must inevitably be full of danger, since it drove him to war, and had besides the deplorable effect of diminishing the interest he ought to have taken in France itself. Our country soon ceased to be anything more to him than one large province of that empire which he desired to bring under his rule. Less interested in our prosperity than in our grandeur, which, in point of fact, was only his own, he conceived the idea of making every foreign sovereign a feudatory of his own power. He believed he should attain to this by placing members of his family on the various thrones which at the time actually sprang from himself; and we may assure ourselves that this was really his project, by attentively reading the form of oath which he exacted from the kings or princes created by him. He sometimes said: “It is my intention to reach such a point that the kings of Europe shall be forced, each one of them, to have a palace in Paris; and, at the time of the coronation of an Emperor of the French, they shall take up their residence in it, be present at the ceremony, and render it more imposing by their homage.” This, it seems to me, was a sufficiently plain declaration of his intention of renewing in 1806 the empire of Charlemagne.

But times were changed, and, as the light of knowledge spread, the people became capable of forming a judgment as to the mode in which they ought to be governed. Besides this, the Emperor perceived that the nobles could never again exercise influence over the people, which had often been an obstacle to the authority of our kings; and he conceived the idea that it was from popular encroachment he must defend himself, and that the spirit of the age required him to take a contrary course to that which for centuries past had been the custom of kings.