Napoleon: A Sketch of His Life, Character, Struggles, and Achievements

by Thomas E. Watson

On October 8, 1799, the four vessels entered the roads of Fréjus, and immediately upon its becoming known that Napoleon was on board, the water was covered with the boats of hundreds crowding to meet him. It was in this spontaneous rush of the people to greet the returning hero that the quarantine law was violated. The joy of the people was unbounded. They rang the bells, they filled the streets with shouting multitudes, they hailed him as the deliverer of France. A king in the best of Bourbon days had never drawn a warmer welcome. On his way from the coast he met with a prolonged ovation. At Lyons it was as though Napoleon had already become the ruler of France.

General Marbot, late commander of Paris, now passing through Lyons on his way to Italy, was somewhat scandalized and offended to see that Bonaparte was treated like a sovereign. Says his son in his Memoirs:—

“The houses were all illuminated, and decorated with flags, fireworks were being let off; our carriage could hardly make its way through the crowd. People were dancing in the open spaces, and the air rang with cries of: ‘Hurrah for Bonaparte! He will save the country!’”

The hotel keeper had given to Napoleon the rooms for which General Marbot had spoken, and Napoleon was in them. Learning how General Marbot had been treated, Napoleon invited him to come and share the rooms comrade-like. Marbot went to another hotel, rather in a huff, it would seem; and Napoleon, determined not to make an enemy out of such an occurrence, went on foot and at once to apologize and express his regrets to General Marbot in his rooms at the other hotel. As he passed along the street he was followed by a cheering crowd.

“General Marbot,” says his son, “was so shocked at the manner in which the people of Lyons were running after Napoleon, as though he were already king, that the journey to Italy was resumed as speedily as possible.”

Napoleon’s route led him through Valence, where there was not only the miscellaneous crowd to cheer him, but some true and tried personal friends. For example, there was old Mademoiselle Bou, who had credited him for board. Napoleon greeted her affectionately and made her some valuable presents, which are now to be seen in the museum of the town. Indeed, the news, flashed to all parts of France, “Bonaparte has come!” created a kind of universal transport. One deputy, Baudin by name, died of joy. Chancellor Pasquier relates that he was at the theatre one evening in Paris, when he saw two very pretty women, sitting in the box next to him, receive a message. They rose in excitement and hurried away. These very pretty women, as Pasquier learned, were the sisters of Bonaparte. A courier had brought the news that their brother had landed at Fréjus. Béranger says in his autobiography: “I was sitting in our reading room with thirty or forty others, when suddenly the news was brought in that Bonaparte had returned from Egypt. At the words every man in the room started to his feet, and burst into one long shout of joy!”

By the signal telegraph of that day, the news had flown to the capital, and in a short while carriages were rumbling along the road out of Paris toward Lyons, bearing relatives and friends to meet the returning hero. One of these lumbering vehicles bore the uneasy Josephine. At Lyons, Napoleon, suspicious of political foes perhaps, changed his course, and hastened toward Paris by a different road. Would-be assassins, if there were any, as well as faithful friends, would fix their plans for nothing.

When Napoleon got down from his carriage before his house in the street which was called, in compliment to him, the street of Victory, there was no wife, no relative, no friend to greet him. His home was a dismal picture of darkness, silence, desertion; and it chilled him with a painful shock which he never ceased to remember. The anxious Josephine, the faithless wife, had gone to meet him, to weep away her sins on his breast, had missed him because of his change of route; and Napoleon, not knowing this, believed she had fled his home to escape his just anger. Bitter days and nights this eminently human Bonaparte had known; bitter days and nights he was to know again; but it may be doubted whether any of them gave to him a bitterer cup to drink than this of his return from Egypt.

Josephine came posting back as fast as she could, worn out with fear and fatigue. Napoleon refused to see her. Locked in his room, he paced the floor, his mind in a tempest of wrath, grief, mortification, wounded love. The guilty wife grovelled at the door, assaulting the barriers with sobs, plaintive cries, soft entreaties. Her friends, Madame Tallien, the Director Gohier, her children, Eugène and Hortense, and some of Napoleon’s friends, besieged the infuriated husband, appealing to his pride, his generosity, his self-interest, his fondness for the children,—in short, using every conceivable inducement,—and at length Napoleon, worn out and softened, allowed Eugène and Hortense to put Josephine into his arms.

Bourrienne relates that many years afterward, strolling along the boulevard with Napoleon, he felt the Emperor’s hand suddenly close on his arm with spasmodic grip. A carriage had just passed, and within it Napoleon had recognized Hypolite Charles, Josephine’s old-time paramour. That this coxcomb still lived, is proof enough that Napoleon the Great scorned personal revenge.