Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, Vol. 2 of 2

by Madame de Rémusat

“I hold myself formally authorized by these passages to bequeath the work which my mother confided to me to the public. As for the opinions which it expresses, taking them upon myself, I will explain myself freely respecting the Emperor and the Empire, but not from the purely political point of view. All that I might say on the subject of despotism (which I hate) would be without importance in this case, since the question is, What would be a just judgment of the Emperor and the Empire formed by one who had witnessed the 18th Brumaire, and shared the confident readiness of the nation to divest itself of the charge of its own destinies, by placing them in the hands of one man? I deal with the moral, and not the political, aspect of the matter.

“Let us first consider the Emperor, and discuss him with those only who, while finding much to admire in him, are willing to exercise their judgment upon what they admire. It was commonly said, under his reign, that he despised men. The motives by which he defended his policy in his conversations were not taken from among the noble qualities of the human heart, but from that which he thoroughly understood, the imagination of the people. Now, imagination is naturally captivated by grand and beautiful things, and the imagination of the Emperor, which was vivid and daring, was accessible to this kind of charm. His extraordinary faculties rendered him capable of great things, and he employed them, with others, to captivate France, the world, and posterity. Thence came what was thoroughly admirable in his power and his life; and, if we were to consider that only, we could not place him too high. Nevertheless, a close observer will discern that it was by that intelligence and imagination, rather than the purely moral sentiments of justice and of right, that all was done. Take, for example, religion. It was not the truth of religion, it was its influence and its prestige, which dictated what he did for its cause; and so with all the rest. In his contemptuous estimate of humanity, he recognized only two springs of action—vanity and self-interest; and to the masterly handling of these he applied himself with remarkable ability. While by the éclat of his acts, by the glory of his arms, by a permanent embellishment of conservative social principles, he gave to his government what was essential to prevent self-love from blushing at the fact of its connection with it, he carefully manipulated, he caressed, he even exalted other sentiments more humble, which may oftentimes be harmless, but which are not noble and virtuous principles. Love of repose, fear of responsibility, preoccupation with the pleasures of private life, the desire of personal comfort, the taste of riches, as well in the individual as in the family; finally, all the weaknesses which usually accompany these sentiments when they are exclusive, found in him a protector. It is from this point of view that he was everywhere recognized as essential to the preservation of order. But, when men are governed by the springs I am about to call to mind, and when the governor is not upheld or restrained by the sentiment of pure and true glory, by the instinct of a soul naturally frank and generous, it is an easy step to the thought that imagination, vanity, interest are paid with counterfeit as well as good money; that abuses of power, appearances of grandeur, success attained at all cost, tranquillity maintained by oppression, riches distributed by favor, prosperity realized by force or made to seem to exist by falsehood—that, finally, all the triumphs of artifice or of violence, all that despotism can wrest from credulity and fear, are things which also prosper among men; and that the world is often, without serious objection, the plaything of the strongest and most shrewd. But nothing in the nature of the Emperor preserved him from the temptation of employing such means for the advancement of his power. Not satisfied with meriting power, he consented, when he could not merit it, to take it by force or to steal it. He made no distinction between prudence and cunning, or between true statesmanship and Machiavellism. Finally, policy is always in the path of deception, and Napoleon was always a deceiver.

“It is deception which, in my judgment, most degraded the Emperor, and, unhappily, with him his empire. For this reason, it is to be regretted that France yielded obedience to him, that men rendered him service, whatever glory the nation has gained, whatever probity and whatever talent the men have shown. One can not wholly ignore the misfortune of having been the dupe or the accomplice, in all cases the instrument, of a system in which a cunning deception plays as great a part as wisdom, and violence as genius; of a system in which cunning deception and violence must lead on to the desperate extremes of an unwise policy. To such a policy France will not consent, and it is only in the interest of self-love that France exalts the glory of Napoleon.

“As to his associates, they likewise ought certainly not to have been humiliated by what they did or what they silently sustained. They were right in not publicly denouncing what the nation did not denounce, and in presenting services loyally rendered, honesty, zeal, devotion, capacity, the patriotism which they had displayed in the performance of public duties, as an offset to the bitter denunciations of their adversaries, to the trifling or corrupt parties, who had done less or who had done worse. The recollections of the Convention or those of the emigration could not be brought against them to any advantage, and, after all, they did well not to blush at their cause. Their justification is found in the language of Tacitus, who, even under a despotism, thinks that praise is due a capable and efficient officer, though he may practice what he calls obsequium et modestia.

“These last words are applicable to persons of high character who, like the members of my family, served the Emperor without mean selfishness and without special distinction. But still, when, under his reign itself, eyes were opened to the character of his despotism—when the wail of the dying nation had been heard, when later, in reflecting upon the fall of a dictatorial power and on the succession of a constitutional power, that policy was brought up for consideration which does not place government and liberty in the hands of enemies, it was impossible not to revert with some embarrassment, with some bitterness of heart, to those days in which example, confidence, admiration, thoughtlessness, a justifiable ambition, had united to urge good citizens to place themselves among the supporters of absolute power. For he who does not seek to make himself blind, he who is ready to be honest with himself, will find it impossible to conceal the fact that dignity of mind and character is lost under the pressure of a despotism even glorious and necessary, and more completely under one that is harsh and maintained without reason. There is no cause of self-reproach without doubt; but neither can one praise his own acts, or be satisfied with what he has done or what he has seen; and the more the soul is opened to the convictions of liberty, the more one turns his eyes with grief to the days in which liberty was shut out from it—days of voluntary servitude, as Boëtius characterizes it.

“What it has not been either necessary or proper to say of one’s self to his contemporaries and of the latter to themselves, it is a duty to frankly avow when one writes for himself and for the future. What conscience has felt and revealed, what experience and reflection have taught, it is necessary to delineate, or not write at all. Unbiased truth, disinterested truth, is the controlling thought of the Memoirs. This is the basis of those of my mother.

“She had suffered intensely during the years in which her opinions were in opposition to her interests, and during which the former could have triumphed over the latter only per abrupta, as Tacitus says, speaking of this same thing, sed in nullum reipublicæ usum. Attempts of this kind, besides, never fall to the lot of a woman; and, in a remarkable letter that my mother wrote to one of her friends, she said to her that women at least had always the expedient of saying in the palace of Cæsar:

‘Mais le cœur d’Emilie est hors de ton pouvoir.’

And she declared to her that this line had been her secret consolation.

“Her correspondence will reveal in its lightest shades, in its deepest recesses, the sentiments of a pure and active soul. It will there be seen how she united a generous kindness to a penetrating observation of all those weaknesses, of all those unhappy circumstances of our nature, which give opportunity to the painters of morals to display their talents. It will there also be seen how, after having caused her much suffering, Napoleon had kept a place in her thoughts; how this memory still moved her; and how, when the unhappiness of his exile at St. Helena was described, she was deeply affected. When, in the summer of 1821, the news of the death of Napoleon was brought to Paris, I saw her melt with tears, and she always became sad when uttering his name. As to the men of her time, I will say only one thing: she had learned to know them at Court. The recollection she had preserved of it left her no pleasure. I have somewhere seen related a little circumstance that greatly interested those who witnessed it. It was the time when the French imitation of Schiller’s ‘Marie Stuart’ was in fashion. There was a scene in which Leicester repels, by pretending not to know him, a devoted young man who, relying on his secret thoughts, comes to him with a proposal to save the Queen of Scotland. Talma represented admirably the haughty cowardice of the courtier, who disavows his own affection for fear of being compromised, and insolently repels the man who makes him afraid: ‘What do you want of me? I do not know you.’ The act terminated, and in the box in which we were seated the entire company was struck with this scene, and my mother in her agitation suffered some words to escape whose import was: ‘That was it precisely! I have seen the same thing!’ When suddenly appeared at the entrance of the box M. de B——, to whom no special application could assuredly have been made, but who had been chamberlain of the Emperor, my mother could no longer restrain herself. She said to Mme. de Catellan, ‘If you knew, madame!’ . . . and she wept!