Were not this a matter so gravely serious, it would be comical to the last degree. The marshal whom Napoleon most detested and distrusted was Bernadotte. The marshal who most envied the Emperor, most hated him, most longed to betray him, was Bernadotte. He had plotted against his chief during the Consulate, and escaped court-martial because he and Joseph Bonaparte had married sisters. He had left Davoust in the lurch at Auerstädt, imperilled the army, coldly leaving thirty thousand French to combat sixty thousand Prussians, without lifting a hand to help the French. Again he had escaped; he was a member of the Bonaparte family.
At Wagram his conduct had been so darkly suspicious, his proclamation claiming a victory where he had failed miserably to do his duty, had been so insolent, that Napoleon ordered him home in disgrace. But again family influence prevailed, and he was made Governor of Rome.
The Swedes had not kept the run of these events, and when Bernadotte’s agents plied them with the argument that he was a member of the Bonaparte family, and a favorite with the Emperor, there were none to deny. Napoleon knew what was going on. He alone could have set the Swedes right, and nipped the intrigue in the bud. Why did he not do so? Absolutely no satisfactory answer can be given. A word from him would have made some other man Prince Royal of Sweden, but he would not speak. With apathetic scorn he looked on while Bernadotte worked the wires, feeling all the while that Bernadotte’s success would be a misfortune to France. He not only refused to interfere, not only refused to correct the false representations upon which the Swedes acted, but gave his formal consent when it was asked, and furnished Bernadotte with $400,000 to equip himself in a suitable way in setting out to take possession of his new dignity.
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Some months after Napoleon’s second marriage, he and the Empress stood sponsors at the baptism of several infants of his great officers. When the baptismal ceremony had been finished, the Emperor turned to some of his intimate friends and said rubbing his hands together as he did when well pleased, “Before long, gentlemen, I hope we shall have another baby to baptize.”
This joyful intelligence gradually spreading, the whole French nation began to look forward with a feeling of hope and satisfaction to the birth of Napoleon’s heir.
On March 19, 1811, the Empress felt the first pains, and “the palace was in a flutter.” Next morning early the crisis came. Napoleon sprang out of his bath, and covered with a dressing-gown hastened to his wife’s room, saying to the excited doctor in charge, “Come, now, Dubois, don’t lose your head.” He embraced the suffering Empress tenderly, but, unable to endure the sight of her anguish, went to another room, where he stood, pale and trembling, awaiting the event. When the physician reported that an operation might be necessary, and that one or the other, mother or child, might have to be sacrificed Napoleon answered, without hesitation, “Save the mother, it is her right.”
To calm them, he said: “Forget that you are operating upon an Empress. Treat her as though she were some shopkeeper’s wife.”
At length the cruel ordeal was over, the child safely delivered, and the mother relieved. The Emperor sprang to her couch and covered her with caresses. He was overwhelmed with joy; his face shone with delight. “Well, Constant, we have a big boy!” he cried to his valet; and to all others as he met them he continued to repeat rapturously, “We have a big boy!” Very, very human was this “Corsican ogre,” Napoleon Bonaparte.
If words and looks go for evidence, the warrior of Austerlitz, the giver of crowns and kingdoms, was never so happy as when he took his son in his arms, kissed it tenderly, and holding it toward his courtiers, said proudly, “Gentlemen, the King of Rome!”