Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, Vol. 2 of 2

by Madame de Rémusat

On the 21st of January, 1808, the assembled Senate granted a levy of eighty thousand men on the conscription of 1809. Regnault, the Councilor of State, who was, as usual, the speaker on the occasion, argued that even as the preceding levies had served to secure the continental peace, so this one would at length obtain for us the freedom of the seas; and no one opposed this reasoning. We knew that Senator Languenais and some others occasionally tried, during the Emperor’s reign, to make certain representations to the Senate on the subject of these severe and numerous levies; but their observations dispersed themselves in the air of the senatorial palace, and effected no change in decisions which had been arrived at beforehand. The Senate was timid and submissive; it inspired no confidence in the national mind, and had even come by degrees to be regarded with a sort of contempt. Men are severe toward their fellows; they do not pardon each other’s weaknesses, and they applaud virtues of which they themselves are seldom capable. In short, whatever tyranny may be exercised, public opinion is more or less avenged, because it is invariably heard. No despot is ignorant of the feelings which he inspires and the condemnation which he excites. Bonaparte knew perfectly well how he stood in the estimation of the French nation, for good or evil, but he imagined that he could override everything.

In the report made to him by his Minister of War, General Clarke, on the occasion of the fresh levies, we find these words: “A vulgar policy would be a calamity for France; it would hinder those great results which you have prepared.” No one was duped by this formula. The question in the comedy, “Qui est ce donc qu’on trompe ici?” was appropriate to the occasion; but everybody kept silence, and that was enough for Napoleon. Shortly after, the towns of Kehl, Cassel, Wesel, and Flushing were united to the Empire, being regarded as keys which it was necessary we should hold in our hands. At Antwerp great works were carried on, and all was stir and activity.

When the English Parliament opened, the Emperor evidently hoped for a disagreement between the English Government and the nation. There was a great deal of sharp dissension, and the Opposition declaimed in its usual style. The Emperor helped it with all his might. The tone or the notes in the “Moniteur” was very violent; certain English journalists were subsidized, and there is no doubt Bonaparte flattered himself that he would be able to bring about a revolt. But the English Ministry was pursuing a course which, though difficult, was honorable to the country, and it had a majority at every vote. The Emperor was incensed, and declared that he “could not understand that form of liberal government in which the voice of the popular party never had any weight.” Sometimes he would say, with a sort of paradoxical audacity: “In reality, there is more liberty in France than in England, because nothing can be worse for a nation than the power of expressing its will without being listened to. When all is said, that is the merest farce, a vain semblance of liberty. As for me, it is not the case that the true state of France is kept from me. I know everything, for I have exact reports, and I would not be so mad as to venture on doing anything in direct opposition to French interests or to the French character. Intelligence of all kinds comes to me as to a common center, and I act in accordance with it; whereas our neighbors never depart from their national system, maintaining the oligarchy at any price; and in this age men are more ready to accept the authority of one able and absolute man than the humiliating power of an effete nobility.”

When Bonaparte talked thus, it was hard to know whether he was trying to deceive others or to deceive himself. Was it that his imagination, which was naturally lively, exerted its influence over his intellect, which was generally mathematical? Did the lassitude and inaction of the nation deceive him? Was he trying to persuade himself that what he desired was the case? We have often thought that he forced himself to do this, and that he sometimes succeeded.

Besides, as I have already said, Bonaparte always believed that he was acting in conformity with the spirit of the Revolution, by attacking what he called oligarchs. At every turn he would insist upon equality, which in his mouth meant leveling. Leveling is to equality exactly what despotism is to liberty; for it crushes those faculties and neutralizes those situations to which equality opens a career. The aristocracy of classes levels, in fact, all that exists outside those privileged classes, by reducing strength to the condition of weakness, and merit to the condition of mediocrity. True equality, on the contrary, by permitting each to be that which he is, and to rise as high as he can, utilizes every faculty and all legitimate influence. It also forms an aristocracy, not of class, but of individuals—an aristocracy which draws into it all who deserve to form a portion of it.

The Emperor felt this distinction, and, notwithstanding his nobles, his decorations, his senatorships, and all his fine talk, his system tended solely to base his absolute power upon a vast democracy, also of the leveling order, with political rights which, although they had the appearance of being accorded to all, were in reality within the reach of none.

Toward the beginning of February the marriage of Mlle. de Tascher, Mme. Bonaparte’s cousin, was solemnized. She was raised to the rank of Princess, and her husband’s relatives were in the greatest delight, and remarkably obsequious on the occasion. They flattered themselves that they would be exalted to a great position; but the divorce undeceived the D’Arenberg family, and they quarreled with the young Princess, who had not brought them quite so much as they expected.

At this time Count Romanzoff, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, arrived in Paris. He was a man of knowledge and of sense, and he came there full of admiration for the Emperor, and affected by the genuine enthusiasm that his own young sovereign felt for Napoleon. He was, however, sufficiently master of himself to observe the Emperor with close attention. He perceived the constraint of the Parisians, who looked on at all the glory of the army without appropriating it to themselves. He was struck with certain remarkable disparities, and he formed a modified judgment which, no doubt, had afterward some influence on the Czar. The Emperor said to him on one occasion, “How do you consider that I govern the French?” “Sire,” he replied, “a little too seriously.”

Bonaparte, with the aid of a senatus consultum, created a new “grand dignity of the Empire,” under the title of “Governor-General beyond the Alps”; and he conferred this dignity on Prince Borghese, who was sent to Turin with his wife. The Prince was obliged to sell the finest statues in the Villa Borghese to the Emperor, and they were placed in our Museum. This collection of all the masterpieces that Europe had possessed was superb. They were grouped in the Louvre with the greatest care and elegance, and that was a conquest of a kind which appealed eloquently to French vanity and French taste.

Bonaparte had a report made to him, in a sitting of the Council of State, upon the progress of science, letters, and art since 1789, by a deputation, at the head of which was M. de Bougainville. After the report had been read, he replied in these terms: “I have heard you upon the progress of the human mind in these latter days, in order that what you say to me may be heard by all nations, and may silence the detractors of our age, who are endeavoring to force the human mind to retrograde, and who seem to aim at its extinction. I desired to know what remains for me to do for the encouragement of your labors, in order to console myself for being unable to contribute otherwise to their success. The welfare of my people and the glory of my throne are equally interested in the prosperity of the sciences. My Minister of the Interior shall make me a report upon all your demands; you may confidently count upon my protection.” Thus did the Emperor occupy himself with everything at the same time, and thus ably did he associate all that was illustrious with the éclat and the grandeur of his reign.