NAPOLEON AND HIS COURT

By the Same Author

A PAWN AMONG KINGS

EQUESTRIAN GROUP OF NAPOLEON AND HIS STAFF AT AUSTERLITZ
(From a print in Canon Brook-Jackson’s collection, believed to be
the only one in existence.)

NAPOLEON AND

HIS COURT

BY

C. S. FORESTER

WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

METHUEN & CO. LTD.

36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.

LONDON

First Published in 1924

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

Napoleon and His Court

CHAPTER I
IN GENERAL

THERE was a time when France extended to the Baltic, the Ebro and the Tiber; when the term “Frenchmen” included Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Germans and even a few stray Danes, Poles and Letts; when Rome was the second city of France, and Amsterdam the third; when the Emperor of the French was also King of Italy and Mediator of Switzerland; when one of his brothers was King of Spain, another, King of Westphalia, and one of his generals King of Naples; when all Germany was ruled by his vassals; when Poland was a French province in all but name; when Austria was the French Emperor’s subservient ally; and when one of his less successful generals had just been appointed ruler of Sweden.

Never, since the days of the Roman Empire, had one man held so much power, and never in all history has so much power been as rapidly acquired or as rapidly lost. In ten years Napoleon rose from the obscurity of a disgraced artillery officer to the dignity of the most powerful ruler in the world; in ten more he was a despised fugitive flying for his life from his enemies.

It is difficult for us nowadays to visualize such a state of affairs. To the people of that time life must have appeared like a wild nightmare, as impossibly logical as a lunatic’s dream. There seems to have been no doubt anywhere that the frantic hypertrophy could not last, and yet when the end was clearly at hand hardly a soul perceived its approach.

There was only one nation of Europe which escaped the mesmerism of the man in the grey coat, and that was the British. It was only in Britain that they did not speak of him with bated breath as “the Emperor,” and remained undaunted by his monstrous power and ruthless energy. To the English he was not His Imperial and Royal Majesty, Napoleon, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, and Mediator of the Helvetian Republic. No, the English thought of him merely as Boney, a fantastic figment of the imagination of the other peoples of the world, who were of course a queer lot with unaccountable fears and superstitions.

But this Boney, this Corsican Ogre, incredible though he was, loomed appallingly large upon the horizon. There were beacons all round the coast in case he landed; his privateers were the scourge of shipping; prices were at famine point and business was parlous on account of his activities; the militia was embodied and there was a ceaseless drain of recruits into the army; every village mourned the loss of a son who had enlisted and whose life had been thrown away in some harebrained expedition into ill-defined foreign parts. And yet on the other hand there were considerations which gave an aspect of unreality to the whole menace. England was constantly victorious at sea, and though Nelson might be mourned the glory of Trafalgar and the Nile cast the possibility of invasion into insignificance. The English people were confident that on land as well they would beat the French at every encounter. Not for nothing were Agincourt and Minden blazoned on English history, and Alexandria and Maida supplied whatever confirmation might be desired. Such disasters as that at Buenos Ayres were forgotten; confidence ran high. When Wellington gained a victory by which all Portugal was cleared of the French at one blow the public annoyance that even greater results had not been achieved, that the whole French army had not been captured, was extreme. There were few English people who did not think that, should Napoleon by some freak of fortune land in England, the veterans of Austerlitz and the almost legendary Imperial Guard would be routed by the militia and the hasty levies of the countryside. There was nothing which could drive the realities of war hard home into the public mind. If prices were high, then as compensation colonies fell into our hands, employment was fairly good, and the business of manufacturing arms and equipment was simply booming. Besides, intercourse with the Continent was not entirely cut off for the smugglers worked busily and successfully, and French lace and French fashions and French brandy circulated freely. It was hard for the average Englishman to realize that the Corsican Ogre was not merely an ogre, especially as the fantastic cartoons of the period and the wild legends which were current were more fitted to grace a child’s fairy-tale than to depict the most formidable enemy England had yet encountered.

On the mainland of Europe the picture was utterly reversed. The reality of war was only too obvious. The Emperor was no mere cartoonist’s figure drawn with disgusting detail. They had seen him; he had ridden into their capitals on his white horse in the midst of the army which had shattered their proud battalions over and over again. His power was terrible and his vengeance was swift. In half the countries of Europe a chance word might result in the careless speaker being flung next day into an unknown dungeon. His armies swarmed everywhere, and wherever they went they left a trail of desolation behind them. The peasants were starved and the landowners were ruined, to pay the enormous taxes which the indemnities he imposed demanded. The mass of the people, who had once hailed the great conqueror because his arrival meant their delivery from feudalism, now found themselves crushed under a despotism ten times more exacting. The Emperor was very real to them. Many of them now served new rulers who had been imposed upon them by him, and him alone. Wherever he appeared he was attended by a train of subject kings to whom his wish was law. At his word an Italian might find himself a Frenchman, or an Austrian a Bavarian. And this was no mere distinction without a difference. Once upon a time the peasant classes cared little about the politics of their rulers, or even about which ruler they served. The fate of a professional army was a royal, not a national concern. But now every able-bodied man found himself in the ranks. Badeners fought Portuguese on the question as to whether a Frenchman should rule Spain, and a hundred thousand Germans perished in the northern snows because the Emperor of the French wished to exclude English goods from Russian ports. The imposition was monstrous, and in consequence the question of nationality became of supreme importance. If a country made war upon Napoleon every citizen of that country now realized that defeat meant the continuance of a slavery as exasperating as it was degrading. The fact that their eventual victory left them very little freer does not enter into this argument. It is sufficient to say that Napoleon was regarded on the Continent with an interest agonizing in its intensity, and that this interest was nourished in a much more substantial fashion than prevailed in England.

It has been maintained and has infected all nationalities alike. The ability of the French nation to write telling memoirs is nowhere better displayed than in the period of the Empire. A large amount of very fascinating material was produced, by which the history of the period, which had previously been grossly distorted, was corrected and balanced. Details were worked out with an elaboration all too rare. The events in themselves were so exceedingly interesting, and the books about them were so well written, that it can hardly be considered surprising that more and more attention was turned towards the Empire. In addition, the fascinating personality of the Emperor concentrated and specialized the attention. More important than all, since events of huge importance turned merely upon his own whims and predilections, it was necessary to analyse and to examine the nature of the man who had this vast responsibility. It has become fashionable to inquire into every detail of his life, and there has grown up an enormous literature about him. Most of these books contain a fair amount of truth, but they nearly all contain a high proportion of lies. Napoleon himself was a good liar, but by now he is much more lied about than lying.

That coffee legend, for instance. Nine books on Napoleon out of ten say (with no more regard for physiology than for fact) that he was accustomed to drinking ten, twenty, even thirty cups of coffee a day. Napoleon drinking coffee is as familiar a figure to us as Sherlock Holmes injecting morphine, but both figures are equally apocryphal. The best authorities, people who really knew, are unanimous in saying that he never drank more than three cups a day. De Bausset, who was a Prefect of the Palace, and in charge of such arrangements, distinctly says he took only two, and goes out of his way to deny the rumours to the contrary which were already circulating. This is but one example out of many; perhaps we shall meet with others later on.

It is necessary first to sketch Napoleon’s career in brief, for the sake of later reference. The merest outline will suffice.

Napoleon began his military life under the old régime as an officer in the artillery; despite an inauspicious start, he attracted attention by his conduct at the siege of Toulon. Later he was nearly involved in the fall of Robespierre, but, extricating himself, he served with credit in the Riviera campaign of 1794. Next, he earned all the gratitude of which Barras was capable by crushing the revolt of the Sections against the Directory in 1795. By some means (it is certain that Josephine his wife had something to do with it) he obtained the command of the army of Italy; in 1796 and 1797 he crushed the Austrians and Piedmontese, conquered Piedmont and Lombardy, and made himself a name as the greatest living general. There followed the expedition to Egypt, where his successes (extolled as only he knew how) stood out in sharp contrast to the failures of the other French armies in Italy and Germany. Returning at the psychological moment, he seized the supreme power, and made himself First Consul. Masséna had already almost saved France by his victory at Zürich and his defence of Genoa, and Napoleon continued the work by a spectacular passage of the Alps and a perilously narrow victory at Marengo. Moreau settled the business by the battle of Hohenlinden. During the interval of peace which followed, Napoleon strengthened himself in every possible way. He codified the legal system, built up the Grand Army which later astonished the world, disposed of Moreau and various other possible rivals, assured the French people of his political wholeheartedness by shooting the Duc d’Enghien and by sending republicans wholesale to Cayenne; and finally grasped as much as possible of the shadow as well as the substance of royalty by proclaiming himself Emperor and receiving the Papal blessing at his coronation. But already he was at war again with England, and the following year (1805) Russia and Austria declared against him. He hurled the Grand Army across Europe with a sure aim. Mack surrendered at Ulm; out of seventy thousand men only a few escaped. At Austerlitz the Russian army was smitten into fragments. Austria submitted, and Napoleon triumphantly tore Tyrol and Venetia from her, gave crowns to his vassal rulers of Bavaria and Würtemberg, and proclaimed himself overlord of Germany as Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine. His brother Louis he made King of Holland; his brother Joseph King of Naples; his brother-in-law Murat Grand Duke of Berg. Prussia demurred, and was crushed almost out of existence at Jena. Russia, tardily moving to her support, was, after a hard fight at Eylau, beaten at Friedland (1807). At Tilsit the Emperors of the French and of Russia settled the fate of Continental Europe, and Jerome, the youngest brother of Napoleon, was given a new kingdom, Westphalia.

So far, nothing but glory and progress; but from now on, nothing but false steps and failure. First, the overrunning of Spain and the proclamation of Joseph as King of Spain. This brought Napoleon into contact with the enmity of a people instead of that merely of a king. It gave England a chance of effective military intervention, and it shook the world’s belief in the invulnerability of the Colossus by the defeats of Vimiero and Baylen. Austria made another effort for freedom in 1809, to submit tamely, after one victory and two defeats, when the game was by no means entirely lost. Hence followed further annexations and maltreatment. Then came blunder after blunder, while the Empire sagged through its sheer dead weight. The divorce of Josephine lost him the sympathy of the fervent Catholics and of the sentimentalists. The marriage with Marie Louise lost him the support of the republicans and of Russia. He quarrelled with his brother Louis, drove him from the country and annexed Holland. He tried to direct the Spanish war from Paris, with bad results. Annexation followed annexation in his attempt to shut the coasts to English trade. The Empire was gorged and surfeited, but Napoleon was inevitably forced to further action. Having irritated each other past bearing, he and Alexander of Russia drifted into war, and the snows of Russia swallowed up what few fragments of the old Grand Army had been spared from the Spanish and Danube campaigns. It was like a blow delivered by a dazed boxer—powerful, but ill-directed and easily avoided, so that the striker overbalances by his own momentum. Napoleon struggled once more to his feet. In 1813 he summoned to the eagles every Frenchman capable of bearing arms. But one by one his friends turned against him. Prussia, Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, each in turn joined the ranks of his enemies. His victories of Lützen, Bautzen and Dresden were of no avail. At Leipzig his army was shattered; he fought on desperately for a few more months, but at last he had to submit and abdicate.

A further effort after his escape from Elba ended with the disaster of Waterloo, and merely led to the last tragedy of St. Helena.

So much for the general. From this we can turn with relief to the particular; and from the particular, with perhaps even more relief, to the merely trivial.

GENERAL BONAPARTE

CHAPTER II
THE MAN HIMSELF

OF course, we all know him. He was rather short and corpulent, and he wore a cocked hat, a green coat with red facings, and white breeches. Sometimes, when the mood took him, he would appear in trailing robes, with a wreath of laurel round his forehead. Very appropriate, admittedly, but—that wreath does appear a little incongruous, does it not? Then there are times when we see him on a white horse in the midst of the battle. One or two dead men are lying near him in graceful attitudes; one or two others are engaged in dying still more gracefully. His staff is round him; in the distance are long lines of infantry and volumes of cannon-smoke. But everything is so orderly and respectable that one cannot help thinking that even in that discreet, dim distance the dying are as careful about their manner as was Cæsar at the foot of Pompey’s statue. Verestchagin and others strike a different note, but they never saw Napoleon alive. We have portraits and pictures innumerable, but are we any nearer to the man himself—to what was inside the green coat and the cocked hat?

It is the same when we come to read the mountains of memoirs which have been written around him. There are solemn memoirs, there are indiscreet memoirs. There are abusive memoirs, there are flattering memoirs. There are memoirs, written in all honesty, during the reading of which one cannot help feeling that the writer would really like to begin personal pronouns referring to Him with a capital letter. And yet, after months—years, perhaps—of reading, one still feels that one knows nothing of him. One realizes, naturally, that he was a marvellously clever man, with a marvellous sense of his own cleverness. But of the man himself, of his little intimate desires and feelings, one remains ignorant. A century of memoir-reading will not do as much for us as would, say, a week’s sojourn alone with him on a desert island. What adds point to the argument is that obviously the writer of the most intimate memoirs was just as far from him as we are.

The fact of the matter is that Napoleon in all his life never had a friend. From his adolescence to his death there was nobody to whom he could speak unguardedly. It was not so much that he posed, as that he had himself well in hand on all occasions. He could unbend; he could pinch a grognard’s ear or crack jokes with his Guard; he could write passionate letters to Josephine or supplicatory ones to Walewska; but we realize that each of these displays is merely a flash from some new facet of the gem. To the design of the whole, to the light which glowed within secretly, we are perforce blind.

His tastes in art, which would be a valuable indication to his character, are variously rated by contemporaries. One thing is certain, and that is that art did not flourish under the Empire. A heavily censored press acts as a drag upon the wheel of progress in this, as in all other matters, but one cannot help thinking that this cessation of development is due as much to Napoleon’s lack of interest in the subject. David’s hard classicism and Isabey’s futilities are the best that the Empire can show in painting, while in sculpture (save perhaps for Houdon), in poetry, in romance, in criticism, not one names survives, with the slight exception of Madame de Staël. There is no French contemporary with Körner who could bear a moment’s comparison; there is not even any single achievement, like Rouget de l’Isle’s of the previous decade, to which France can point with pride. Napoleon’s own favourite works in literature make a rather curious list; tragedy was the only kind of dramatic literature which he favoured, although tragedy is the weakest part of the French drama, and in tragedy he ranked Corneille far above all others; Ossian’s poems, despite translation into French, had a great attraction for him, perhaps because the exalted wording appealed to him in his moments of fantastic planning; Goethe, the greatest living poet, held no fascination for him; but Rousseau did. Indeed Rousseau’s influence is clearly visible in many of Napoleon’s own writings. Beyond this, there is almost nothing modern which received the seal of his approval. The classics he read in translation, and solely for the sake of their matter. Music was not specially liked by him; he tolerated it because it roused in him the same sensations as did Ossian’s verse—it was a drug, a stimulant to him, but not a staple necessary. In painting he showed no special taste; the honours he gave David clearly indicate that he held no theories of his own on the subject. This list of likes and dislikes is non-committal; it can tell us little about Napoleon himself; and we are once more brought to an abrupt halt in our endeavour to discover what manner of man he really was.

Yet we can approach the question indirectly. Napoleon had no friend; there was never a time when he was taken off his guard. His soldiers loved him—stay! It was not love, it was adoration. That is the key to the mystery. It was not the love of one man for another; it was the worship of a God. But just as no man can be a hero to his own valet, so can no general be a God to his immediate subordinates. The rank and file could think of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Jena, but what of the Marshals? At Marengo, France was on the verge of a frightful disaster. The slightest touch would have turned the scale, and Napoleon, hemmed in against the Alps, must have surrendered. What of France then, with a triumphant army at her frontier and not another regiment at hand? In the Austerlitz campaign it was nearly the same. Before Jena, Napoleon fell into error after error. Not until the next day was he made aware that only half the Prussian army had fought against him, and that he had recklessly exposed a single corps to meet the attack of the other half at Auerstädt. That Davout fought and won was Napoleon’s good fortune, not the result of his skill.

Looking back on fifteen years of unbroken success, the private soldiers might well believe Napoleon to be a God, but the Marshals were near enough to him to see the feet of clay. For them there was neither adoration nor love. He was their taskmaster, and a jealous one at that, lavish of reprimand and miserly of praise. He gave them wealth, titles, kingdoms even, but he never risked rivalry with himself by giving any one of them what they most desired—military power. The Peninsular War dragged on largely because he did not dare to entrust the supreme command of three hundred thousand men to a single general. With gold and glory even misers like Masséna became eventually satiated, and one by one they dropped away from his allegiance when the tide turned. It fell to Marmont, the only one of all the Marshals who owed everything to the Emperor, to surrender Paris to the Allies and complete his ruin. Not one of the twenty-six paladins accompanied their master to Elba or St. Helena; that was left to the junior officers such as Bertrand, Montholon and Gourgaud, who had been near enough to him to adore, but too far off to see faults. Yet even to these, life with their idol became at times unbearable, and more than one of them deserted before the end. In men Napoleon could not inspire the love that endures.

As regards women, it is an unpleasant task to venture a definite opinion. An aura of tradition has gradually developed around Josephine’s memory, and she is frequently looked upon as a woman who sacrificed herself for her love, and allowed herself to be divorced to aid her husband. Yet her most indignant partisan would not deny that she had much to lose beside her husband. The position of Queen of Queens; unlimited jewels; an unstinted wardrobe (and she was passionately fond of clothes); the prospect of the loss of all this might well have moved a woman to more tears even than Josephine shed. And of her affection for her husband one may be permitted to have suspicions. Her circumstances before the marriage were at least doubtful, and afterwards—those nasty rumours about Hippolyte Charles and others seem to have some foundation in fact.

Of Marie Louise mere mention is enough. When we come to discuss her later life and her conduct with Neipperg we shall find clear proof that she did not love Napoleon. The other women who came into his life are pale shades compared even to these two. With none of them was he in love, and none of them loved him, or came to share his exile. Madame Walewska visited him for a few days at Elba, but that was merely to seek further favours for herself and her son. After Waterloo she married; all her predecessors had already done the same. Women did not love Napoleon. We may picture Napoleon, then, going through life friendless and quite alone. Never a moment’s relaxation from the stiffness of his mental attitude of superiority; never the light of friendship in the eye of man or woman; every single person in Europe was either his slave or his enemy. To say the least, his was an isolated position. And yet, was he unhappy? Bourrienne tells us that in the early Revolution days Napoleon walked the streets, gaunt and passionate, with a lustful eye for rich carriages, ornate houses, and all the outward emblems of power. The phase ended as soon as power was his, and he passed easily into the condition of isolation which endured for the rest of his life. He was the Man of Destiny, the sole creature of his kind, and he was happy. His isolation never troubled him in the least. If ever he referred to it, it was in terms of satisfaction. He was guilty on more than one occasion of saying that he was above all law, and it is well known that he believed in his “star”; he believed that he was marked out by some inscrutable higher power (the limitations of whose exact nature he never defined) to achieve unbounded success and to wield a permanently unlimited power. It is difficult to imagine such a condition. The most ordinary or most modest man has usually an undying belief that his own ability transcends all others, and that Providence regards him with a special interest, but deeper still there is almost invariably a further feeling (often ignored, but usually obvious at a crisis) that this simply cannot be so. Even if this further feeling does not become apparent, a man’s sense of humour usually comes to his rescue and saves him from the uttermost absurdity. But Napoleon’s sense of humour was only feebly developed, and in many directions was totally wanting. On the other hand, there were certainly many reasons for his classification of himself as a different being from ordinary men. He never turned his hand to anything without achieving much greater success than his contemporaries. If a codification of law was required, then Napoleon codified laws, without one half of the difficulty previously experienced. He won battles over every general whom the Continent pitted against him. If a province was to be conquered, or, conquered, had to be reorganized, then Napoleon was ready at a moment’s notice to dictate the methods of procedure—and he was usually proved to be correct. For twelve years, from 1800 to 1812, Napoleon did not know what it was to fail in any matter under his own personal control, while during that period his successes were unprecedented. Besides, there were more convenient standards of comparison. He was able to work at a pace which wore out all his subordinates, and he was able to continue working long after they had been compelled to confess themselves beaten. In his capacity for mental labour he stood not merely unequalled, but unapproached. Even physically he was frequently able to display superiority; his staff over and over again were unable to endure fatigues which he bore unmoved. Lastly, he was usually able to bend to his will anyone with whom he came in contact. The unruly generals of the Army of Italy in 1796 gave way to him, when he was little more than a favoured upstart, with extraordinary mildness. He induced conscientious men like Lefebvre to agree to the most unscrupulous actions. Alexander of Russia, smarting under the defeats of Austerlitz and Friedland, was won over in the course of a few hours’ interview, and became Napoleon’s enthusiastic ally.

There certainly was a great deal in favour of the theory that Napoleon was a very remarkable man, but not even the greatest of men is justified in believing that he is different from other men in kind as well as in degree. The fact that Napoleon really did believe this is highly significant. It hints at something being wanting in his mental constitution, something similar to, but even more important than a sense of humour. His shameless duplicity in both his public and his private concerns points to the same end. His inability to gain the lasting friendship of any of those with whom he came in contact is another link in the chain of argument. His complete disbelief in the disinterestedness of the motives of any single human being completes it. Napoleon was one of the most brilliant thinkers the world has ever seen; he was the most practical and strenuous in action; he enjoyed for twenty years more good luck than anyone has ever deserved; but he had a meanness of soul unsurpassed in recorded history. As a machine, he was wellnigh perfect (until he began to wear out); as a man he was deplorably wanting.

CHAPTER III
SOME PALADINS

IT was a common saying in the Napoleonic army that every man in the ranks carried a Marshal’s bâton in his knapsack. This was correct in theory, but in actual practice it hardly proved true. Every one of the twenty-six Marshals of the First Empire had held important commands before the rank was instituted.

Grouchy, the last Marshal to be created, was second-in-command of the Bantry Bay expedition in 1796, when Napoleon was just making his name; Jourdan had commanded the Army of the North as far back as 1794.

But if the title of Marshal was no more than their bare due, Napoleon certainly gave his generals other honours in plenty. One of them, Murat, he made a King; another, Bernadotte, after receiving the title of Sovereign Prince of Ponte Corvo, later became King of Sweden and Norway. Berthier was Sovereign Prince of Neufchâtel. Three other Marshals were created Princes of the Empire; thirteen were created Dukes; six, Counts; and the only one remaining, Poniatowski, was a Prince of Poland already.

Besides titles, wealth without limit was showered upon them. Suchet received half a million francs with his bâton; Davout in 1811 enjoyed an income, all told, of two million francs a year along with the unofficial dictatorship of Poland and the command of a hundred and fifty thousand men. It was Napoleon’s habit to bestow upon his generals huge estates in each country he conquered. Lefebvre received the domain of Johannisberg, on the Rhine, which had once belonged to the Emperor of Austria and later passed to the Metternich family, while Junot received a castle and estate of the unlucky King of Prussia. Nearly every man of mark was given five thousand acres or so in Poland, with the attached serfs. And Napoleon was the Apostle of the Revolution!

The one condition attached to the gifts was that the recipient must spend as much as possible in the capital. So Parisian shopkeepers grew fat and praised the Empire; the Paris mob battened on the crumbs which fell from the tables, and a feverish gaiety impressed the onlooker. Out in the subject countries was nothing but a grinding poverty, and in the countries recently conquered by France the tax-collectors strove to gather in enough to pay the indemnities, and even the rats starved because the Grand Army had passed that way.

It is when we come to examine the careers of the Marshals that we first meet evidence of one of the most curious and significant facts of Napoleon’s life. Everybody to whom Napoleon showed great favour; everyone who received his confidence; everyone, in consequence, who had appeared at one time to be on the direct road to unbounded prosperity, met with a most tragic and unfortunate end. Not a few of the worst set-backs which Napoleon experienced were due to the defects of those whom he had trusted and aggrandized, and many of his favourites, apparently too weak morally to endure the intoxication of success, turned against him when fortune ceased to smile upon him. Their deaths were tragic, and their lives were nearly all dishonourable.

Of all the Marshals, Berthier was the foremost in seniority, in precedence, and in favour. In every campaign which Napoleon fought, from 1796 to 1814, he held the position of Chief of Staff. The history of his military career during this period needs no repetition—it is one with Napoleon’s. Every conceivable honour was bestowed upon him. He was given the sovereignty of the principality of Neufchâtel and Valangin; in 1809 the additional title of Prince of Wagram; he was appointed a Senator, a Minister, Vice-Constable of France and a Grand Dignitary of the Empire; at Napoleon’s hands he received a bride of royal descent, in the person of a Princess of Bavaria; in 1810 the supreme honour was his of representing Napoleon at the preliminary ceremony of the marriage with Marie Louise. It seemed that he was one with Napoleon, his faithful shadow and devoted servant. And yet when Napoleon abdicated and was sent to Elba, Berthier threw in his lot with the Bourbons, and swore allegiance to them. Napoleon’s return and new accession to power during the Hundred Days, in consequence placed him in a terrible position. He was torn between his new allegiance and his old devotion to Napoleon. The strain proved too severe. He died at Bamberg, just before Waterloo, having flung himself from a high window in his despair.

The second senior of the Marshals was Joachim Murat. Murat was fortunate in two ways. He was able to handle large masses of cavalry with decision on a battlefield, and he married the sister of the Emperor. There was very little else to recommend him for distinction, but these two facts were sufficient to raise him to a throne. Napoleon appointed him to the command of the cavalry of the Grand Army. He made him a Prince and Grand Admiral of France. Next came a sovereignty—the Grand Duchy of Berg and Cleves, and two years later Murat mounted the throne which Joseph Bonaparte had just vacated, and became King of the Two Sicilies. So far, it was a highly satisfactory career for a man who had begun as the assistant of his father, the inn and posting-house keeper of La Bastide. Murat determined to keep his throne, and during the dark days of 1814 he turned against Napoleon, and marched at the head of his Neapolitans against the French. But retribution was swift. He lost his throne next year in a premature attempt to unite Italy, and in the end he was shot by the indignant Neapolitan Bourbons after the miserable failure of an attempt on his part to recover his crown after the fashion set by Napoleon in his descent from Elba.

It is, perhaps, a pardonable digression to consider here what might have happened had Murat retained his throne. It is certain that he would have been as progressive as the Austrians and his own weak nature would have allowed. It is possible that the United Italy party would have looked towards his dynasty instead of to the House of Savoy. The growing Napoleonic tradition would have aided. Perhaps to-day we might behold in the south a King of Italy descended from a Gascon stable-boy, to balance in the north a King of Sweden descended from a Gascon lawyer’s clerk.

But to return to our former theme. So far we have seen two of Napoleon’s favourites meet with violent deaths. There are many more instances. Bessières was a nonentity distinguished by little except his devotion to the Empire. He attracted Napoleon’s notice in 1796, and his doglike faithfulness was a sure recommendation. Bessières became the Commander of the Guard; later he was created Duke of Istria and was given immense riches. Napoleon honoured him with all the friendship of which he was capable; it seemed not unlikely that a throne would be found for him. But Bessières died in agony after receiving a mortal wound at Lützen.

Then there was Ney, the brave des braves. His personal courage was almost his only title to fame. When Napoleon attained supreme power, Ney was a divisional general of the Army of the Rhine. Under the Empire he became Marshal, Duke of Elchingen and Prince of the Moskowa. It was Ney who made Ulm possible by his victory at Elchingen; it was he whose attack beat back the Russians at Friedland; to him is due much of the credit for Borodino, while his command of the rearguard during the retreat from Moscow is beyond praise. And yet he was many times in error. At Jena and during the Eylau campaign his impetuosity was almost disastrous. He made several grave mistakes during Masséna’s campaign in Spain, 1810-1811. At Bautzen in 1813 he lost a great opportunity, and he was beaten later at Dennewitz. It was his vigour and his dauntless courage which recommended him to Napoleon, who made full use of these qualities to stimulate the hero-worship of his young troops. Ney received wealth, high command and a princely title at the Emperor’s hands. Then he helped to force the Emperor to abdicate. However, he was unstable; he betrayed his new king and went over to Napoleon during the descent from Elba. Napoleon entrusted him with the task of staving off the English during the Waterloo campaign, and he failed lamentably. He lost a great opportunity at Quatre Bras through having allowed his columns to lengthen out; he shilly-shallied all the morning of the 16th of June; he ruined the campaign by his furious countermand to d’Erlon in the afternoon; and finally at Waterloo he wasted the reserve cavalry by his unsupported attacks on the English squares. And the Bourbons shot him as soon as possible after the second Restoration.

Lannes, “the Bayard of the French Army,” whom Napoleon had called “le braves des braves” before he gave the title to Ney, met with as miserable a fate. He had begun life as a dyer’s apprentice at Lectourne, but enlisted at the opening of the Revolutionary wars, and was a colonel on Napoleon’s staff during the first campaign of Italy. His fearless acceptance of responsibility, and his magnificent dash and courage while in action were his great assets, and Napoleon favoured him more than any of the younger Marshals, except Murat. It was largely through him that Napoleon found it possible to employ the strategic weapon which he invented—the strategic advanced guard. Victories as widely divided as Marengo and Friedland were directly due to Lannes, and he was proportionately rewarded with a Marshalate, a Colonel-generalship, an enormous fortune and the title of Duke of Montebello. But he was mortally wounded at Aspern, and died of gangrene at Vienna.

There was one Marshal whom Napoleon especially favoured who did not meet with a violent death. Nevertheless his end was more terrible by far than was Bessières’ or even Lannes’. This was Marmont, who in 1796 was a young captain twenty-two years of age, but who gained Napoleon’s regard to such good effect that he was Inspector-General of Artillery at twenty-six, governor of Illyria and Duke of Ragusa at thirty-four, and Marshal in 1809, one year later. But he failed in Spain, Wellington beating him thoroughly at Salamanca. In 1814 he dealt the finishing blow to the tottering Empire by his surrender of Paris. He seemed fated to be unfortunate. Pampered by the Bourbons, he mishandled the army in Paris during Charles X.’s attempt at absolute power, and ruined both the dynasty and himself. He dragged out the remainder of his life in exile, hated and despised alike by Bonapartists, Legitimists, Orleanists and Republicans.

So much for the Marshals Napoleon liked; his favour certainly appears to have been blighting. Now for those whom he disliked.

When Napoleon finally got rid of Moreau, the man who succeeded in general estimation to the vacant and undesirable position of unofficial leader of the unofficial opposition was Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte. This man was one of the most despicable and successful trimmers in history. In Moreau’s Army of the Rhine he had attained the rank of general of division, but he was in no way a talented leader. Just before Napoleon’s return from Egypt he had intrigued to attain the supreme power, but over-reached himself. In Napoleon’s coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire he hunted with the hounds and ran with the hare with remarkable success, assuring the Directory on the one hand of his unfaltering support, and yet joining the group of generals who accompanied Napoleon, but characteristically not wearing uniform. In addition, he had a convenient shelter behind a woman’s petticoats, for with subtle forethought he had married Joseph Bonaparte’s sister-in-law, Désirée Clary. Désirée was a jilted sweetheart of Napoleon’s, and what with her hatred of the great man, Joseph’s support, and Napoleon’s horror of a scandal in his family (combined with a sneaking affection for her) Bernadotte made himself fairly secure all round. But he still continued to intrigue against Napoleon. During the Consulate an extraordinary conspiracy was discovered centring at Rennes, Bernadotte’s headquarters. Bernadotte himself was undoubtedly implicated, but he somehow wriggled free from suspicion. To the Republicans he posed as a Republican; the Bourbons were convinced that he was on their side; actually he was working for his own hand, while, thanks to Joseph, he obtained his Marshalate and the principality of Ponte Corvo from the Empire.

In action, various unsavourily suspicious incidents occurred in connection with him. In 1806 he took advantage of an ambiguous order to absent his corps both from Jena and Auerstädt; the results of his action might have been far-reaching. Later Benningsen and the Russian army escaped from the trap Napoleon had set for them by capturing vital orders which were on their way to the Prince of Ponte Corvo. At Wagram his corps was routed and broken up.

But when, in 1810, the Swedes were seeking a Crown Prince for their country, he was the man they selected. Apparently their choice should have been agreeable to Napoleon. Was Bernadotte not the brother-in-law of the King of Spain, a connection by marriage of the Emperor, Prince of Ponte Corvo and one of the senior Marshals? Moreover, while Governor of Hanover, he had had dealings with the Swedes and had ingratiated himself in their esteem. Napoleon was furious, but he could do nothing, and Bernadotte became Crown Prince and virtual autocrat of Sweden. It only remained for him to win the favour of Russia by turning against France, so that, at the Treaty of Abo, Norway as well was handed over to his tender mercies.

Later he even angled for the throne of France, but the French could never forgive the part he had played in defeating them at Gross Beeren, Dennewitz and Leipzig; they did not realize that with this very object in view he had almost betrayed his new allies, and had hung back and procrastinated in order to retain his French popularity.

But double-dealer, intriguer, traitor that he was, hated by Napoleon, hated by the French people, despised by the rest of Europe, he nevertheless held on to his throne, and transmitted it to his descendants. Nowadays the House of Bernadotte is not considered too ignoble to wed even with a branch of the House of Windsor.

There were other Marshals whom Napoleon disliked, mainly because of their former association with Moreau. Macdonald was the son of a supporter of the Young Pretender, and was a relative of Flora Macdonald. He failed to pass the examination for a commission under the old régime, but with the Revolution came his chance. He distinguished himself under Dumouriez and Pichegru (who subsequently turned Royalist), and then under Moreau. It was an unlucky start for him. The Directory appointed him to the command of the Army of Naples, but with this force he was beaten by Suvaroff in the four days’ battle of the Trebbia. Subsequently he performed the marvellous feat of leading an army across the Splugen in midwinter, but for all that Napoleon employed him as little as possible, keeping him on half-pay until 1809. However, Macdonald received his bâton after Wagram; mainly, it is believed, to throw a stronger light on Bernadotte’s failure. In 1813 Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum, was beaten again at the Katzbach, but by now Napoleon had some idea of his worth and retained him in command. By a delicious piece of irony, Macdonald the distrusted was the last Marshal to leave the Emperor in 1814; he was also one of the few to adhere to the Bourbons during the Hundred Days. He enjoyed great honour under the Restoration and the July Monarchy, and died comfortably in his bed at the age of seventy-five.

Another bête noire of Napoleon’s was St. Cyr. He too was one of the “Spartans of the Rhine.” In consequence Napoleon kept him out of active service as much as possible. This course of action was of doubtful utility, for St. Cyr was a man of superior talents. Not until 1812 was he made a Marshal, but wounds then kept him out of action until August, 1813, and he was made prisoner by the Allies in the autumn. The Bourbons, however, took kindly to him, and he held various high offices until his death in 1830.

Thus the five favourite Marshals of Napoleon died miserably, and the three whom he disliked would be said to have lived happily ever after by any self-respecting moral story-teller. It is a very curious fact, and one which finds a parallel elsewhere in Napoleon’s career, as we shall see in later chapters.

PRINCE JOACHIM
(MURAT, KING OF THE TWO SICILIES)

CHAPTER IV
ONE WIFE

WE have already alluded to the intensely needy period of Napoleon’s life, which was mainly centred around the year 1795. He knew himself to be a world conqueror; he despised the shifty intriguers who controlled at that time both his own destiny and that of France; he bitterly envied the few insolent survivors of the old noblesse whom he had met, while his very bread was precariously earned. It was a maddening situation.

Then circumstances suddenly took a change for the better. By a happy accident Barras employed him to put down the revolt of the sections, and within a few days Napoleon found himself general of the army of the interior, and a person of some consequence. Still, there were bitter drops even in this first draught of success, for his position depended solely on the whim of the readily corruptible Director, who could with a word have sent him either to a dungeon or to a command-in-chief. Moreover, the haughty Parisian society regarded the gaunt, desperately earnest general of twenty-six with an amusement they made no attempt to conceal. Parisian society had had nearly two years by now in which to concentrate, and it was already crystallizing out. There were old sans-culottes, now Ambassadors, Ministers or Directors. There were Army contractors in hordes. There were their wives (either by courtesy or by Republican law) who were just recovering from the sans chemise phase and beginning to ape the old customs of the haut noblesse. Finally there were a few of the old court families along with innumerable pretenders, ex-valets masquerading as ci-devant marquises; comtesses (as précieuses as they could manage) who had once been kitchenmaids, while every name hinted at a “de” which had been perforce dropped during the Terror. And because trifling was for the moment the fashion, this select band could well afford to sneer at the ridiculous little Corsican officer who meant everything he said, and who had had great difficulty before the Revolution in proving the three generations of noble descent necessary to obtain nomination as a military cadet.

Napoleon in these circumstances acted very much as he did in a military difficulty. He selected the most advantageous objective, flung himself upon it, and followed up his initial success without hesitation. He broke into the charmed circle of Directory society by marrying one of its shining lights.

Josephine, vicomtesse de Beauharnais, was a representative of the farthest outside fringe of Court society under the old régime. Her marriage with Beauharnais had been arranged by her aunt, who was her father-in-law’s mistress. This unfortunate relationship, combined with poverty and the obscurity of the family, had barred most of the doors of pre-Revolutionary society to her, and the Beauharnais were, in the minds of the Montmorencys and Rohans, no more worthy of notice than the merest bourgeois. Of this fact Bonaparte cannot have been ignorant, no matter what has been said to the contrary, but it was of no importance to him. He cared little even for the fact that Beauharnais had been at one time a President of the Constituent Assembly and Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Rhine, before meeting the fate of most of the Commanders-in-Chief of 1794. All that mattered to Bonaparte was that Josephine was a member of the narrow circle of the Directory, that in fact she and Madame Tallien were the two most important women therein, and that marriage with her would gain him admission also. The Directory was fast becoming a close oligarchy keeping a jealous eye watching for intruders, and Napoleon had to act at once. His policy was soon justified, for immediately after his marriage his position was recognized by the offer of the longed-for command of the Army of Italy.

There were other considerations as well. Josephine possessed a wonderful charm of manner, and her taste was irreproachable. The beauty of her figure was undoubted; that of her face was enhanced by dexterous art. To Napoleon, starved of the good things of life, and incredibly lustful after them, she must have appeared a houri of his Paradise. The violence of his reaction from a forced self-control may be judged by the stream of passionate letters which he sent her every few hours during the opening of his campaign of Italy. Heaven knows he had difficulties enough to contend with there, what with mutinous generals, starving soldiers, and an enemy twice his strength, but we find him snatching a few minutes two or three times a day to turn from his labours and worries in order to contemplate the joys he had attained, and endeavouring to express them on paper.

Josephine’s motives were also mixed. She was thirty-two years of age, and she was desperately poor. Her late husband’s property was almost entirely situated in the West Indies, and it was now held by the English. Her dreadful experiences under the Terror, when she was imprisoned and within an ace of being guillotined, had probably aged her and shaken her nerve. Barras and various bankers had helped her with funds (perhaps expecting a return, perhaps not) but such resources would soon come to an end. In this extremity, appeared Napoleon, pressing an urgent suit. After all, he was not too bad a match. He was already general of the army of the interior, and between them both they ought to screw some better appointment out of Barras. He had not a sou to bless himself with beside his pay, but Republican generals usually found means to become rich in a short time. If he were killed, there would be a pension; if he survived, and was unsuccessful, divorce was easy under Republican law. She obviously stood to gain much and to lose little.

And then it could not be denied that Napoleon had a way with him. His fierce Southern nature would sometimes raise a response in her. After all, she was a Creole, and her Creole blood could hardly fail to stir at his passionate wooing. Although six years his senior, disillusioned, experienced, hardened and shallow though she was, there were times when his tempestuous advances carried her away.

Yet at other times, when he was absent, and she had once more caught the infection of cynicism and trifling from her associates, Napoleon appeared vaguely absurd to her. “Il m’ennuie,” she would say, languidly turning the pages of his letters. She had no desire to leave Paris, where she was enjoying the prestige of being the wife of a successful general, to share with him the privations of active service. Only when Lombardy was in his hands, and a palace and an almost royal reception were awaiting her, did she join him.

Moreover, until she had a position to lose, she undoubtedly indulged in flirtations. Corsican jealousy may have played a part in the furious rages to which Napoleon gave rein, but there is no denying that Josephine was several times indiscreet. In turn, he suspected Hippolyte Charles, a young and handsome army contractor, Murat (at that time his aide-de-camp) and even Junot, his blind admirer.

By the time that Napoleon was nearing supreme power, his brief passion for Josephine had burnt itself out. He himself had already been several times unfaithful to her, and the only feeling that still remained was the half-pitying affection a man bears towards a discarded mistress. On his return from Egypt he found elaborate preparations made for him. His family, poisonously jealous of Josephine, were waiting with circumstantial accounts of her actions, and they pressed him to obtain a divorce. Josephine, who had set out to meet him, in order to get in the first word, had taken the wrong road and missed him, so that the Bonaparte family had a clear field. They made the most of it. Josephine returned to Paris to find her husband almost determined upon divorce.

At one and the same time Napoleon had to endure the anxieties of the coup d’état, the urging of his brothers and sisters and the appeals of his wife and step-children. It must have been a severe trial, and in the end he gave way to Josephine. Probably he realized that it was the wisest thing he could do. He could ill afford a scandal at this crisis in his career, and Josephine was a really useful helpmate to him. He paid off her debts (to the amount of a mere hundred thousand pounds) and settled down to make the best of things.

The lesson was not lost on Josephine. She was now the first lady of the Continent, and never again did she risk the loss of that position. Thenceforward she lived a life of rigid correctness, and instead it was Napoleon who became more and more unfaithful to her.

It was a strange period through which Josephine now lived. On the one hand she had reached heights of which she could never have dreamed before; on the other was the bitter probability that all her power and position would vanish in a moment when Napoleon made up his mind to take the plunge. The other Bonapartes were most bitterly hostile to her, and lost no opportunity of displaying their hostility. The only possible method of making her position permanent was to have a child, and this boon was denied her. And yet Napoleon found her a most invaluable ally. Her queenly carriage and perfect taste in clothes were grateful in a Court the awkwardness of whose manners was the jest of Europe. The majority of Frenchmen were honestly fond of her, and her tactful distribution of the charitable funds placed at her disposal by Napoleon enhanced this sentiment. In her meetings with royalty she was superb; she displayed the arrogance neither of an upstart nor of an Empress; the Kings of Würtemberg and of Bavaria grew exceedingly fond of her. Most important of all, perhaps, was the help which she gave Napoleon during the Bayonne Conference. The haughty grandees of Spain, the harebrained Prince of the Asturias and even the imbecile King himself showed her the deepest respect, despite the fact that Napoleon was endeavouring to coerce them into handing over the crown to his brother.

The occasions were rare, however, when Josephine was allowed to enter into more than the mere ceremonies of international politics. She was neither allowed to act nor to advise. At the least hint of interference on her part Napoleon was up in arms on the instant. Current rumour credited her with attempting to save the life of the Duc d’Enghien, and this has frequently been affirmed since, but from what we know of Napoleon and from what we know of Josephine we can only conclude that her attempt was timid and that Napoleon’s refusal was blank and brief. For Josephine there only remained a purely decorative function. Other activities were denied to her (one cannot help thinking that she did not strive for them with much vigour); she was placidly content to spend her days in inspections of her wardrobe, in changing her toilettes half a dozen times daily and talking scandal with her ladies-in-waiting.

These amusements were not quite as harmless as might be imagined, for her passion for dress caused her to run heavily into debt, and every jeweller in Paris knew that he had only to send her jewellery for inspection for it to be instantly bought. To pay her debts she was put to curious expedients. She was in continual terror lest her husband should discover them, and she gladly paid enormous blackmail to her creditors to postpone the day of claim. She even appealed for assistance to Ministers and other high officials sooner than tell Napoleon. Naturally the storms which occurred when the day of reckoning could no longer be put off were terrible. Napoleon raged ferociously at every discovery. He paid the debts, it is true, but he usually arbitrarily reduced the totals by a quarter or even a half before doing so. Even then the tradespeople made a large profit, for they not only made allowance for his action, but they also took full advantage of Josephine’s uninquiring nature.

The unstable situation dragged along, to the surprise of many people, to the consternation of many others, and to the delight of even more, for several nerve-racking years. The end had to come sooner or later, and it came surprisingly late.

CHAPTER V
THE DIVORCE

AT the close of 1809 Napoleon was at the height of his power. Every country of Europe, except England, was his vassal or his ally, and he was about to send Masséna and a sufficient force to Spain to ensure that England also would cease from troubling. The circumstances which were to lead to the fall of his enormous empire were already well developed, but they were hardly obvious to the common eye, which was dazzled by his brilliance.

The one element of weakness apparent was the lack of an heir to the throne. The equilibrium of Europe was poised upon the life of one man, and although many people believed that man to be superhuman, there was no one who thought him immortal. Napoleon had been wounded at Ratisbon; perhaps at his next battle the bullet would be better aimed. But hit or miss, there were many would-be assassins in Europe, and knives were being sharpened and infernal machines prepared in scores of dingy garrets.

No one could imagine what would happen were Napoleon to die. The Marshals recalled longingly the break-up of the Macedonian Empire, and already in fancy saw themselves kings. The Republicans saw in his death the downfall of autocracy; the Royalists hoped for the restoration of Legitimacy. Subject nations saw themselves free; hostile nations saw themselves enriched. The one thing which obviously could not happen was the succession of the legal heir; Joseph in Spain, Louis in Holland and Jerome in Westphalia were at that very moment showing how unfit they were to govern anything. The Viceroy of Italy (Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s stepson) was popular and capable, but Napoleon realized that on account of his lack of Bonaparte blood he would not be tolerated. There was one child who might perhaps have been accepted, and that was Napoleon Charles, son of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense Beauharnais. Vulgar gossip gave Napoleon himself the credit for being the father of his step-daughter’s child, and on this account Napoleon Charles was considered the likely heir, but he died of croup. It is possible that calamities without number would have been prevented had there been in 1807 an efficient nurse at the sick-bed of a child.

However that may be, Napoleon had no heir, and he had given up hope of Josephine presenting him with one. At the same time, any doubts he had on his own account were effaced by the birth of a son to him by Madame Walewska. He dismissed as impractical a suggested scheme of simulated pregnancy on Josephine’s part; too many people would have to be in the secret; if they lived they would hold as much power as the Emperor himself; and if (as he was quite capable of doing) he executed everyone concerned, in Oriental fashion, tongues would wag harder than ever. Besides, although the French would apparently put up indefinitely with his losing a hundred thousand of their young men’s lives a year, they would not tolerate for one second being made fools of in the eyes of the whole world.

Then Napoleon might have adopted one of his own illegitimate sons. Even this wild project he considered carefully, but he put it aside. The only course left open was to divorce Josephine and take some more fruitful wife instead, and Napoleon gradually came to accept this project.

Whether he was wise or not in this course of action cannot be decided definitely. Certainly he was not justified in the event, and he later alluded to the Austrian marriage as an “abyss covered with flowers.” What he left out of full consideration when making his decision was that, while Europe might suffer his tyranny uncomplainingly if they believed that the system would end with his death, they would endeavour to end it at once if there were a chance of its continuing indefinitely. In a similar manner the birth of an heir to James II. of England had precipitated matters a century before. But whether Napoleon forgot this point, or whether he believed his Empire more stable than it actually was, he nevertheless determined on divorce and a new marriage.

On his return from the Wagram campaign of 1809, Josephine found him fixed in his decision. The connection between their apartments was walled up, and for weeks the Emperor and the Empress never met without a third person being present. It seems strange that the man who did not falter at Eylau, who sent the Guard to destruction at Waterloo, should have been daunted by the prospect of a woman’s tears, but Napoleon undoubtedly put off the unpleasant interview as long as possible. At last he nerved himself to the inevitable, and the dreaded sentence was pronounced. An official of the palace tells a story of Napoleon’s sudden appearance among the Imperial ladies-in-waiting carrying the fainting Empress in his arms. Ten days later, on the 15th of December, Josephine announced her acquiescence in the decision to the Imperial council, and the marriage was annulled by senatus consultum.

Napoleon had endeavoured to procure a more satisfactory form of divorce from the Pope, but Pius, to his credit, would not assist him. Five years before, at the coronation, he had refused his blessing until the Imperial pair had been married by the Church (the marriage in 1796 was purely a legal contract), and Napoleon, exasperated but compelled to yield, had submitted to a ceremony conducted by the Archbishop of Paris under conditions of the utmost secrecy. Pius could not in decency give his aid to break a marriage celebrated at his especial request only five years before, and in consequence he found himself a prisoner in French hands, and the last of the patrimony of St. Peter was annexed to the French Empire.

It would puzzle a cleverer man even than Napoleon to devise a series of actions better calculated to annoy the Church and its more devout followers.

For Josephine the pill was gilded in a style more elaborate even than was customary under the Empire. She retained her Imperial titles; she received the Elysée at Paris, Malmaison, and the palace of Navarre. An income of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling per annum was settled upon her. No restraint in reason was set upon her actions; she was not forced into retirement; and Napoleon continued to visit her even after his marriage to Marie Louise. For the last four years of her life Josephine occupied a position unique in history.

Josephine bore her troubles well in public. However much she may have wept to Napoleon, however much she may have knelt at his feet imploring him to have mercy, to the world at large she showed dry eyes and an immobile expression. Perhaps her pride came to her help; perhaps, after all, freedom, the title of Empress, and a monstrous income, may have reconciled her to her loss of precedence; it is even conceivable that she preferred the sympathy of Europe, expressed in no uncertain voice, to the burdens of royalty.

Josephine all her life was a poseuse of minor mental capacity; what could be more gratifying to her than a situation where the possibilities of posing were quite unlimited?

For her, these possibilities were never cut short. She never had to endure the anticlimax of being the divorced wife of a fallen Emperor; she died suddenly just before Napoleon’s first abdication, soon after receiving visits from all sorts of Emperors and Kings who were accompanying their armies in the campaign of 1814.

CHAPTER VI
ANOTHER WIFE

THUS at the beginning of 1810 Napoleon found himself once more unmarried, and free to choose himself a new bride. There never was a choice so fraught with possibilities of disaster. It was not so much a matter of making the most advantageous selection, as of making the least dangerous. If he married a woman of inferior rank, all Europe would exultantly proclaim that it was because no royal family would admit him. If he married a princess of one of his subject kingdoms, Bavaria, Würtemberg or Saxony, the others would become instantly jealous. A Bourbon bride was obviously out of the question, seeing that he was keeping all three royal branches out of their patrimonies. Should he choose a Hohenzollern, then the countries which held territories which had once been Prussian would become justifiably uneasy. There only remained the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs, and a marriage with either would annoy the other. The best thing Napoleon could do was to ally himself with the more powerful, which was undoubtedly the royal house of Russia.

But here Napoleon met with an unexpected reverse. The Czar Alexander was at once a realist and an idealist, and he could not decide anything without months of cogitation. Moreover, the clever advisers round him foresaw that Napoleon’s demands of their country must increase unbearably, and they had no intention of tying their ruler’s hands in this fashion. Torn between his ministers’ advice and the urging of his old admiration for Napoleon, between his pride of race and his desire for a powerful alliance, Alexander temporized and then temporized again. He explained that all the Grand Duchesses were members of the Greek Church, and he had qualms about the necessary change of religion. He tried to show that they were all already affianced. He said, literally, that his mother would not allow him to act.

In the end, Napoleon, fearing a rebuff, and conscious that delay would weaken his position, abandoned the project and turned his attention to Austria. Alexander was naturally annoyed. 1812 may be said to have begun in 1810.

However, if a Grand Duchess were unavailable, an Archduchess would certainly bring Napoleon compensations. The House of Hapsburg-Lorraine was the most celebrated in Europe; it had supplied Holy Roman Emperors since the thirteenth century. After Napoleon and Alexander, Francis was easily the most powerful continental ruler, despite his recent defeats; Aspern and Wagram had just shown how delicately the balance was poised. But more than this; the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons had repeatedly intermarried; if there were anything that would convince the doubters that Napoleon was a real, permanent monarch, it would be his marriage with the niece of Louis XVI, the daughter of His Imperial, Royal and Apostolic Majesty the Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Duke of Styria, of Carinthia and of Carniola, erstwhile Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and titular King of Jerusalem.

The achievement would be deficient in some respects. Tyrol and Dalmatia no longer figured in the Emperor’s resounding list of titles—France ruled one and Bavaria the other, and Austria might easily demand restitution as the price of Marie Louise’s hand. The very name of the new Empress would remind people of Marie Antoinette, her ill-fated aunt, and a family alliance between Napoleon and the autocrat of autocrats might well give the coup de grâce to the moribund belief in Napoleon as the Apostle of the Revolution.

Be that as it may, Napoleon had already gone too far to draw back, and early in 1810 he prevailed on Francis I. to make a formal offer of his daughter’s hand.

They were an oddly contrasting couple. He was forty, she was eighteen. He was an Italian-Corsican-French hybrid of unknown ancestry, she was of the bluest blood in Christendom. He was the victorious leader of the new idea, she was the scion of a dying autocracy. Three times had Marie Louise fled with her family from the wrath of the French; all her life she had heard the man who was about to become her husband alluded to as the embodiment of evil, as the Corsican Ogre, as the Beast of the Apocalypse. They had never met, and she had certainly not the least idea as to what kind of a man he was. All things considered, it was as well that she had been trained all her life to accept her parents’ decision on her marriage without demur.

Her training had been what might have been expected of the etiquette-ridden, hidebound, conservative, dogmatic House of Hapsburg. She was familiar with every language of Europe, because it could not be foreseen whom she would eventually marry. Music, drawing, embroidery, all those accomplishments which permitted of surveillance and which did not encourage thought were hers. But she was proudest of the fact that she could move her ears without moving her face.

Every possible precaution that she would retain her valuable innocence had been taken. She had never been to a theatrical performance. She had never been allowed to own a male animal of any species; her principal pets were hen canaries. Her reading matter was closely scrutinized beforehand, and every single word which might possibly hint at difference of sex was cut out with scissors. It seems probable that she had spoken to no man other than her father and her uncles. One can hardly be surprised at reading that her mental power was small, after being stunted in its growth in this fashion for eighteen years.

Napoleon sent as his proxy to Vienna Berthier, his trusted chief of staff. One can find nowhere any statement that the Austrians were pleased to see their princess standing side by side with a general whose latest acquired title was Prince of Wagram.

Perhaps as a sop to the national pride of Austria, Napoleon sent the bride he had not yet seen presents which have never been equalled in cost or magnificence. The trousseau he sent cost a hundred thousand francs; it included a hundred and fifty chemises each costing five pounds sterling, and enormous quantities of all other necessary linen. In addition he sent another hundred thousand francs’ worth of lace and twelve dozen pairs of stockings at from one to three pounds sterling a pair. Dressing-table fittings and similar trifles cost nearly twenty thousand pounds, but all this expenditure was a mere trifle compared to the cost of the jewellery which Marie Louise received. The lowest estimate of this is placed at ten million francs—four hundred thousand pounds. Her dress allowance was to be over a thousand pounds a month.

Poor stupid Marie Louise might well fancy she was in Heaven. The daughter of an impoverished emperor, she had never possessed any jewellery other than a few corals and seed-pearls, and her wardrobe had been limited both by her niggardly stepmother and by circumstances.

All her life she had been treated as a person of minor importance, but suddenly she found even her pride-ridden father regarding her with deference. Metternich and Schwartzenberg sought her favour. Her aunts and cousins clustered eagerly round her, anxious to share in the spoils. It certainly was a silver lining to the cloud of matrimony with an unknown.

Napoleon on his side was enraptured with the prospect. His meanness of soul is well displayed by his snobbish delight. He went to inordinate lengths in order to secure the approval of the great lady who had condescended to share his throne. He swept his palaces clear of anything which might remind his wife of her predecessor, and refurnished them with meticulous care. The fittings were standardized as far as possible, so that she might feel at once at home wherever she might choose to live; he even arranged a suite of rooms for her exactly like those she had lived in at Schönbrunn. Napoleon gave his passion for organization full rein in matters of this kind, and without doubt he achieved a splendid success. “He was a good tenant, this Napoleon,” said Louis XVIII., inspecting the Tuileries after the Restoration.

It was not merely her home that Napoleon adorned for Marie Louise, but even himself. For a space the green coat was laid aside, and he arrayed himself in a tunic stiff with embroidery. He tried to learn to waltz, and failed miserably. In everything he acted in a manner which amazed even those who had lived with him for years. No woman was half so excited over her first ball as was Napoleon over the prospect of marrying a Hapsburg.

He grew more and more excited as Marie Louise and her train journeyed across Germany and drew nearer and nearer. From every halting place despatches reached him in dozens. Marie Louise wrote to him, Caroline Murat (whom he had sent to welcome her) wrote to him, Berthier wrote to him, the ladies-in-waiting wrote to him, even the mayors of the towns passed through wrote to him. The officers who brought the letters were eagerly cross-questioned. The Emperor who, when on the brink of grand military events, would tell his attendants only to awaken him for bad news, passed his days waiting for his unknown bride in a fever of impatience.

At last he could bear it no longer. Napoleon was at Soissons, where the meeting had been arranged to take place, but, unable to wait, he rode forward post haste through pelting rain, with only Murat at his side. At Courcelles they met the Empress. At first the coachman was minded to drive past the two muddy figures who hailed him, but Napoleon made himself known, and clambered into the Imperial berline. He would brook not another moment’s delay. The carriage pelted forward through all the towns where addresses of welcome were ready, where droves of damsels all in white were preparing to greet them, where banquets and fêtes were ready. They drove past Soissons, where a wonderful pavilion had been erected, in which the Imperial pair had expected to meet for the first time during a ceremony more pompous even than epoch-making Tilsit; they only stopped when they reached the palace of Compiegne, where, at nine o’clock at night, a hurried dinner was prepared by the astonished servants.

Even the dinner was cut short. Half-way through Napoleon asked Marie Louise a question; she blushed, and was unable to answer. It is to be doubted if she even knew what he was talking about. Napoleon turned to the Austrian envoy. “Her Majesty is doubtful,” he said. “Is it not true that we are properly married?” The envoy hesitated. No one had expected that Napoleon would take the ceremony by proxy seriously; elaborate arrangements had been made for a further ceremony in Paris. But it was useless for the envoy to demur; Napoleon carried off Marie Louise to his own apartments, and breakfasted at her bedside next morning. Later his meanness of soul once more obtruded itself, when he hinted at his experiences to one of his friends.

If Napoleon was a parvenu among monarchs, he was at least able to show scoffers that his own royal ceremonies could put in the shade any similar display by thousand-year-old dynasties. At Marie Louise’s coronation four queens bore her train.

Characteristically they tried to trip her up with it. Never before had the world beheld four queens bearing another woman’s robes, and certainly never before had it seen anything parallel to the other exhibition.

When we come to see who these queens were, we shall appreciate the peculiar irony of the situation. First, there was the Queen of Spain, Joseph’s wife, who was still angry about Napoleon’s jilting of her sister Désirée, and who furthermore saw as a consequence of this marriage the probability of the arrival of a direct heir and the extinction of her husband’s chances of the succession. Secondly came Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, Napoleon’s sister, violently jealous of Napoleon, of Marie Louise, and of everyone else. Third came the wife of Jerome Bonaparte, Catherine, Queen of Westphalia, whom Napoleon had torn from the arms of her betrothed to give to his loose-living young brother. The fourth was Hortense, Queen of Holland, whose mother Napoleon had just divorced in order to marry the woman whose train Hortense was carrying. Had Marie Louise been capable of any unusual thought whatever, she must have felt that she would be safer entering a powder magazine than going up the aisle of Nôtre Dame with those four viragoes at her heels.

MARIE LOUISE
EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH

CHAPTER VII
SOME COURT DETAILS

ONCE bitten, twice shy. Napoleon had had one wife of whom doubtful stories had circulated. He would run no risk with the new one. Marie Louise had been strictly guarded all her life. Napoleon determined that in that respect he would substitute scorpions for her father’s whips. No man was ever to be presented to his wife without his consent; under no circumstances whatever was she to be alone with a man at any time.

To achieve his object he revived all the court ceremony of the Soleil Monarque; he added a few oriental improvements of his own, and to see that his orders were carried out he surrounded Marie Louise with women who were the wives and sisters of his own generals, absolutely dependent on him and accustomed to military procedure.

The Austrian ladies who had attended on Marie Louise before her marriage were sent home, every single one of them, as soon as she crossed the frontier. Marie Louise bade good-bye there to the friends of a lifetime—Napoleon was risking nothing. As Dame d’Honneur and consequently first lady-in-waiting, Napoleon appointed the Duchess of Montebello, widow of the unfortunate Lannes, who had died fighting at Aspern against Marie Louise’s father and an army commanded by Marie Louise’s uncle. The other important positions were filled in similar fashion. Four “red women” were appointed, whose duty was to be by the Empress’s side night and day, two on duty and two within call. Had enough eunuchs been available, Napoleon would probably have employed them. A seraglio would have been quite in agreement with his estimation of woman’s constancy.

Considering that his court etiquette had to recover from the citizen phase of the Revolution and from the solemn, military stiffness of the Consulate, Napoleon certainly succeeded remarkably well. Where aides-de-camp sufficed in 1802, equerries were necessary from 1804 onwards; the maîtres d’hotel had to be replaced by chamberlains; the Empress’s friends had to be appointed ladies-in-waiting. Like all reactions, this one went too far. The gaiety of the Bourbon court was extinguished, and the devil-may-care trifling of the Directory salons perished equally miserably.

Napoleon himself was mainly responsible for this. He was never good company in any sense of the word. He had a remarkable gift for saying unpleasant things in an unpleasant manner, and in his presence the whole company was on tenterhooks, wondering what was going to happen next. If a lady had a snub nose, he said so; if a gentleman’s coat was shabby, he said so with fury, because it was his pride to be the only shabby person present. If rumours hinting at a lady’s fall from virtue were in circulation, he told her so at the top of his voice, and demanded an explanation. When Napoleon quitted his court he invariably left half the women in tears and half the men in a rage. Then Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento and Grand Chamberlain, would go limping round from group to group, saying with his twisted smile, “The Emperor commands you to be amused.”

While Josephine was Empress, this state of affairs was not so noticeable, for her dexterous tact soothed the smart caused by Napoleon’s brusqueness, but under Marie Louise unbearable situations occurred again and again.

It must be admitted that the various parties at court made at least as dangerous a mixture as the constituents of gunpowder. To begin with, the members of the Imperial family itself were as jealous of each other as they could possibly be. Pauline, who was a mere Serene Highness, would grind her teeth when she had to address her sister Caroline as “Your Majesty.” Caroline and the other Queens would rejoice openly because, being Queens, they were given armchairs when Napoleon’s own mother had to be content with a stool. And they were one and all scheming for the succession in the event of Napoleon’s fall.

Then there were still a few Republicans among the Princes and Dukes. One of the Marshals, compelled by Napoleon to be present at the solemn Mass which celebrated the Concordat, salved his conscience by swearing horribly throughout the ceremony, and, when asked by the First Consul how he had liked it, replied that it only needed to complete the picture the presence of the half million men who had died to uproot the system. Such men as these thought little of pushing in front of Serene Highnesses, or of laughing loudly when Pauline Bonaparte made the gesture which led to her banishment from court.

Then there were a few representatives of the old noblesse, to whom Napoleon, in his wholehearted snobbery, had offered large inducements to come to his court. These people regarded the ennobled barrel-coopers, smugglers and stable-boys with a mild but galling amusement. On one occasion Lannes, finding his path to the throne-room blocked by these ci-devants, drew his sword and swore to cut off the ears of the next person who impeded him. It was naturally exasperating to the Marshals, who had risen from the ranks in the course of twenty campaigns, after receiving wounds in dozens, to find these nobles given high positions purely on account of their names. To make matters worse, there were very lively suspicions that many of them had actually borne arms against France as émigrés, in La Vendée, on the Rhine, or in Italy. Yet even these considerations were of small account compared to the wrath of the new nobility when they found that the old still clung stubbornly together, and refused, apparently, to admit even the existence of anyone outside the Faubourg St. Germain.

The largest group at court was that of the new nobility, but its superiority of numbers was discounted by the violent jealousies of its individual members. The maxim which guided Napoleon in his dealings with his subordinates was, apparently, “Divide et impera.” He set his generals and ministers by the ears until there was not one of them who had not some cherished hatred for another. Davout hated Berthier, Lannes hated Bessières, Ney hated Masséna, Fouché hated them all, Savary hated Talleyrand; and the resultant bickerings were incessant. At court this was merely undignified; in the field, as was proved twenty times over in the Peninsular War, it was positively dangerous. It might be thought that Napoleon, with inexhaustible funds and domains at his disposal, and unlimited princely titles in his gift, could have satisfied them all. But that was where the trouble began. Napoleon could not give them all they desired, as otherwise (such was the condition of the Empire) they would have nothing to fight for. There were glaring examples of this. When Masséna had been made a prince, and had accumulated wealth and glory past calculation, he deteriorated hopelessly. He failed badly in the Busaco campaign of 1810-11, and sank promptly into an effete degeneracy at the age of fifty-five. No, Napoleon could not afford to give his Marshals all they desired, and in consequence jealousies and friction increased unbearably.

With the junior officers the difficulties were just as great. Brutes like Vandamme, aristocrats like Belliard and Ségur, rakes like Lasalle and fools like Grouchy, were all mingled together. What was worse was that generals and diplomats of subject states necessarily came into contact with them also. It must have been maddening for the Prussian, Von Yorck, to hear Vandamme discoursing on the plunder he had acquired in Silesia in 1806, or for Schwartzenburg, the Austrian, to hear Lasalle boasting of his successes among the ladies of Vienna during the Austerlitz campaign.

But for a whole year, beginning in 1810, Napoleon in spite of these difficulties was supremely happy. There was peace all over the Continent, and the Continental system seemed at last to be on the point of success, for England’s finances were undoubtedly shaken. So short was gold in England that Wellington in the Peninsula rarely had enough for his needs, and the Portuguese and Spanish subsidies were heavily in arrears. Masséna with a hundred thousand men had plunged into the fog of guerilla warfare on the Tagus, and everyone was confidently expecting to hear of the fall of Lisbon and the expulsion of the English from Portugal.

Meanwhile, Napoleon was savouring the delights of respectable married life. With his nineteen-year-old wife he indulged in all sorts of innocent pleasures, riding, hunting, practical joking, theatricals. He so far forgot himself as to tutoyer his Imperial bride in the presence of his whole Court, and the mighty nobles (who never indulged in such behaviour even in the intimacy of their wives’ boudoirs) were astonished to hear the Emperor and Empress exchanging “thees” and “thous.”

Napoleon gave up hours of his precious time to his wife, waited patiently when she was late for an appointment (Josephine was never guilty of such an offence) and generally acted the devoted husband to the life. For a whole year he was faithful to Marie Louise, a feat which he never achieved before or after until St. Helena. And as the months rolled by and hope changed to certainty his devotion grew greater still.

For the birth of the child the most elaborate preparations were made. Some time before he was born Mme. de Montesquieu was named Governess of the Children of France, a healthy Normandy girl who was in the same condition as the Empress was secured as prospective wet nurse and kept under strict surveillance (her own child died when it was taken from her, but that is not usually recorded), and all France waited in a hush of expectation.

Once again Napoleon was risking nothing. He was going to leave no possible foundation for rumours to the effect that the child was not his, or was not Marie Louise’s. Napoleon Francis Joseph Charles was born in the presence of the four doctors, Dubois, Corvisart, Bourdier and Yvan; of the Duchess of Montebello, dame d’honneur; of Mme. de Luçay, dame d’atours; of Mme. de Montesquieu, Governess of the Children of France; of six premières dames de chambre; of five women of inferior rank, and of two filles de garde-robe. Cambacères, Duke of Parma and Archchancellor of the Empire, was present in an ante-room, and should have witnessed the birth even if he did not; Berthier, Prince of Neufchâtel and Wagram, was in attendance on Napoleon, and also may have witnessed it, while immediately after the birth all the other Grand Dignitaries of the Empire and the representatives of all the friendly countries of Europe were paraded through the room. Napoleon had ordered Corvisart, whose nerve was giving way under the strain of the business, to treat Marie Louise like a bourgeois wife, but he hardly practised what he preached. The birth took three days; it certainly seemed a good omen for this scrap of humanity to keep all these dozens of people with high-sounding titles waiting for seventy-two consecutive hours.

After an anxious ten minutes the young Napoleon showed signs of life; he had at first appeared to be dead, and brandy had to be given him and he had to be discreetly smacked before he would cry. But he did so at length, and Napoleon announced to the waiting dignitaries, “It is a King of Rome.” The guns fired a salute to inform the expectant crowds; twenty-one guns were to herald the birth of a daughter; one hundred a son. At the twenty-second gun a storm of cheers arose. More than forty years after, a ceremony almost identical announced the birth of an equally ill-fated son to another Emperor of the French.

Thus the wish of Napoleon’s heart was fulfilled. For the moment he disregarded all the counter-balancing disadvantages and revelled in the possession of an heir. He cared nothing at the time for the fact that the doctors forbade the Empress to have the much desired second son to inherit the crown of Italy; it was nothing to him that Bavaria, Holland, Würtemberg and Saxony at once became restless at seeing their period of thraldom indefinitely prolonged; he hardly cared that Masséna had come miserably back from Portugal, with a ruined army, baulked irretrievably by Wellington at Torres Vedras, so that the “running sore” of the Peninsular campaign was reopened. He flung away his last chance of going in person to end the business, merely to remain by the side of the wife and child of whom he was so proud.

But despite his pride, he still left nothing to chance. Attendance on Marie Louise was maintained as strictly as before; an unauthorized presentation to the Empress by the Duchess of Montebello of some relation of hers called forth a tornado of wrath from the Emperor. The surveillance was redoubled when Napoleon left for the Russian campaign, although he paid her a compliment which had never been paid to Josephine—he appointed her Regent. Poor, silly Marie Louise, three years after being an insignificant princess, found herself Empress of the French, Queen of Italy and Regent of half Europe!

Her august husband nevertheless saw fit to have the Empress-Queen-Regent spied upon by a scullion, who sent him weekly reports, fantastically spelt on blotched and smeared kitchen paper! Nothing else is necessary to prove how utterly lacking in decent instincts was the victor of Austerlitz.

The action was typical of many. Perhaps Napoleon was right; everyone knows how readily autocracy becomes bureaucracy when the autocrat ceases to supervise his subordinates adequately; but not even the Second Empire nor Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century could show so many spies and counter-spies, police and counter-police and counter counter-police as did the First Empire. Secret delation flourished, and the prisons were full of people who had been arbitrarily cast into gaol without even a form of trial. Napoleon wished to know everything that was going on; not the least stray fragment of tittle-tattle came amiss to him. Consequently his regular police developed an organization which spread its tentacles into every avenue of life. Fouché, Minister of Police, could boast of having an agent in every drawing-room and kitchen in the Empire. But then Napoleon feared that Fouché would distort for his own purposes the reports of the agents when making his own report to Napoleon. Since Fouché was Fouché such a thing was not unlikely. So Napoleon had a second and independent police system making similar reports to another minister. Yet even when Fouché was at last got rid of, and packed off as His Excellency the Governor of Rome (and later Dalmatia); even when Savary, “the man who would kill his own father if Napoleon ordered it,” was in charge of the police affairs the dual police system was still adhered to. And besides these, Napoleon had spies of his own, working quite independently, reporting direct to himself, and he placed these not only in the two original police systems, but everywhere where they could keep an eye on those in high places. His royal brothers were surrounded with them; they were to be found in the secretariats of all the ministers; and since payment was largely by results, and they had to justify their existence somehow, it is not surprising that they brought forward trumped-up charges, suborned perjury, and generally acted as typical Continental agents-provocateurs. But all this elaborate system failed to gain the least hint of the Mallet conspiracy, which came so near to pulling down the Empire in the autumn of 1812.

There were opportunities enough for conspiracy, goodness knows. Bourbonists and Republicans, Bonapartists and anarchists, all sought to keep or to acquire power. The Murats, the Beauharnais, the various Bonaparte brothers and even Bernadotte, were all scheming for the succession or the regency, while intertwining among all this was the more legitimate scheming of the various European powers, whose secret agents were equally active throughout the Empire. There is small room for wonder that after a dozen years of this frantic merry-go-round the French people accepted the Bourbon restoration quietly, lest worse befall.

Yet all this does not excuse Napoleon for spying on his wife; for that the only justification lies in the event. How many times has Napoleon been rated for saying that adultery is a matter of opportunity? But his wife apparently did her best to prove him right. In 1814 the Empire was falling, and Napoleon’s abdication was evidently inevitable. One thing alone raised him to an equality with hereditary monarchs, and that was the fact that he had married the daughter of the greatest of them all. They might exile General Bonaparte, but would they dare to exile along with him the Emperor of Austria’s daughter? Besides, in Marie Louise’s keeping was the young Napoleon. To allow him to accompany his mother into exile with his father was simply to court disaster.

At first the prospect seemed dark for the Allies. Marie Louise stood firm, refused to be parted either from her son or from her husband, and generally acted the devoted wife to the life. In this dilemma the Allies appealed to the most cunning and cold-hearted of all their agents—Metternich, who for thirty years was to hold Europe in the hollow of his hand. Metternich was the cynic magnificent, without belief in the constancy of any man or woman born. In that self-seeking age his opinions were largely justified. Metternich plunged adroitly into the affair. He must have known a great deal about the mentality of feeble-minded women, seeing that one of his boasts was that he never had fewer than three mistresses at a time. He selected an agent whom no one at first sight would have believed to be of any use, but who turned out to be extremely valuable. If Neipperg was a knave, he was at least the knave of trumps. He was an elderly one-eyed diplomat, a count and a general in the Austrian army, with a good record behind him. He justified Metternich’s choice remarkably quickly, and while His Imperial, Royal and Apostolic Majesty looked on and applauded this prostitution of his daughter, he wormed his way into Marie Louise’s affections, so that by the time Napoleon was deposited in Elba, Marie Louise’s second child (whose engendering Corvisart had so strictly forbidden) was expected in a few months’ time, while her first was under lock and key at Schönbrunn, deprived of all his French friends and attendants, and started on the unhappy life which was to end sixteen years later in consumption, despair and death.

To Napoleon’s credit be it recorded that never by word or deed did he hint at this horrible desertion. All the rest of his life he spoke of Marie Louise with affection and respect, and had he had his way, Marie Louise would have been Regent of the French during the minority of Napoleon II.

Marie Louise lived happily for another thirty years. The Allies rewarded her adultery by giving her the sovereignty of Parma for life, and there she lived with Neipperg, whom she married morganatically as soon as Napoleon was dead. For a long time she bore him one child a year, and the Emperor of Austria, with great consideration, made all of them illegitimate and morganatic alike, princes and princesses of the Empire. No sooner was Neipperg dead than she contracted another morganatic marriage with a person of even lowlier degree. When she was expelled from her duchy by the rising of 1831, she was restored by Austrian bayonets, and she died at length a year before the far more serious rising of 1848. She never saw her first-born child after 1815 until he was on his deathbed in 1832.

The unfortunate Louise of Tuscany, who married and then deserted the Crown Prince of Saxony, tells us that to her, as to all the other Hapsburg princesses, Marie Louise’s career was held up as a shining example of the fortune which attended good girls who did just what the head of the family, the Emperor, told them. But the Emperor of Austria, since he had nothing to gain by it, did not condone the adultery of this particular Archduchess.

GRAF VON NEIPPERG

CHAPTER VIII
THE GREATEST PALADIN

IN the course of his military career Napoleon found he needed three different kinds of subordinate officers. First, he wanted men of supreme courage and vigour in action, whose other talents need not be more than mediocre. These he could keep under his own hand until the decisive moment arrived, and could then let loose, confident that they would complete the work which his strategic achievements had begun. Of this type, Ney, Augereau and Oudinot were examples.

Then he needed a few generals who combined initiative and resource along with their tactical talents. On these he could rely to execute minor strategical movements, knowing that their tactical skill would help them to sustain any difficulties into which they might fall until the perfection of his strategical arrangements helped them out. The supreme example of this type was Lannes the irreplaceable.

Besides these, Napoleon needed one or two men who could combine all the qualities necessary to a good general, so that he could entrust to them the supreme command of the minor theatres of war. To be a good general, a man must possess strategical skill, tactical skill and administrative ability, as well as the personality to ensure that his ideas are carried out. But to satisfy Napoleon’s jealousy, such a general in the Imperial army had to have another quality—he had to be a man who would never allow his thoughts to wander in the direction of obtaining the throne for himself. If Napoleon could have found three men with all these qualifications he could very possibly have maintained his Empire, since they would have assured to him the safety of Italy, Spain and Poland. But there was only one of these Admirable Crichtons available, and that was Davout. Under Davout Poland and North Germany were held strongly for the Empire. In Italy Eugène de Beauharnais, by the aid of powerful common-sense, high ideals and capable subordinates, was fairly successful, but in Spain there was nothing but shame and disaster. Masséna failed badly; so did Marmont; Joseph Bonaparte and his Major-General, Jourdan, were worse than useless; Soult and Suchet made a fair show, but could not rise superior to the handicap of circumstances. Another Davout might have saved Spain for the Empire, but there was only one Davout.

Davout is the ideal type of the man who combines ability with a sense of duty. In many ways he reminds one of Wellington. He was the scion of an old noble and military family of Burgundy, and was born a year later than Napoleon. He passed through the military college, and received his commission in 1789, just before the Revolution. The loss of many officers through emigration gave him rapid promotion. He was a colonel in 1791 (at the age of twenty-one!) and a brigadier-general two years later. Already he had attracted attention by the stern discipline he maintained (discipline was hardly the most noticeable feature of the Revolutionary armies) and Napoleon, realizing his ability, included him in his army after Campo Formo. He went to Egypt as one of Desaix’ brigadiers, and returned with the same general in 1800. After Marengo and the treaty of Luneville, Napoleon gave him employment suitable to his talents, and appointed him to the command of the 3rd Corps of the Army of the Ocean. A marshalate followed in 1804. As commander of the 3rd Corps Davout began to build up the wonderful reputation which he later enjoyed. There was no other force in the Grand Army which could rival the 3rd Corps for discipline, for marching capacity, for fighting capacity, and for perfection of equipment.

The 3rd Corps was to Napoleon what the Numidians were to Hannibal, the Tenth Legion to Cæsar, the archers to Edward III., the Light Division to Wellington—they were the men who could be trusted most nearly to achieve the impossible.

At Austerlitz Davout was called upon to sustain the attack of practically the whole of the Austro-Russian army, and he and the 3rd Corps clung doggedly on to the difficult country round the lakes for hour after hour while Napoleon developed his attack on the heights of Pratzen. Before Austerlitz Napoleon had declared that an ordinary victory would be of no use to him; on the morning of the battle he called upon his men for a “coup de tonnerre.” But for Davout Austerlitz would have been at best an “ordinary victory.”

The next campaign, that of Jena, was marked by the failure of Napoleon’s intelligence arrangements and by confusion in his strategical arrangements. But it was also marked by the most sweeping success Napoleon ever gained. He himself with most of the Grand Army fought and routed half the Prussian army at Jena. On the same day Davout, with a single corps, fought and routed the other half at Auerstädt. Single-handed Davout sustained the attack of an army of twice his strength; he beat off Blücher and the furious Prussian squadrons; he counter-attacked without hesitation; he called for efforts of which few troops could have been capable, and finally he flung the enemy back in utter disorder.

The battle was more than a mere tactical success. Without Davout’s victory the pursuit after Jena would never have become historic. In fact Napoleon refrained from pursuit until he had heard from Davout. Well he might, indeed. Had Davout been beaten, Napoleon must have swung aside to face the victors, who would have been menacing his flank; Bernadotte’s corps would have been isolated and in serious peril, and there would have been no chance of close pursuit of Hohenlohe’s force. This would have had time to rally; the stern Prussian discipline would have knitted it once more together; it might have made a good defence of the line of the Elbe; the Russians might have arrived in time to save Berlin; there would perhaps have been no Friedland, and no Tilsit.

The stout little bald-pated man who commanded the 3rd Corps changed the face of Europe at Auerstädt.

Davout brought his corps through blizzards and across marshes to save the situation at Eylau; it was his opportune arrival and bold counsel which saved Napoleon from a grave tactical reverse, with probable serious consequences.

After Friedland Napoleon needed, as has already been said, a man of iron to hold down the north while he attended to the south. He made the only possible choice in Davout.

It would seem curious to us nowadays to hear that a general had made his fortune while in command; what a storm of rage would be aroused if anyone were to suggest that a modern English general had acquired three or four hundred thousand pounds while commanding in France! But apparently under the First Republic and First Empire it was the usual practice for all officers of high rank to plunder for their own hands, and to make enormous fortunes out of perquisites. Davout was the only exception, but Napoleon saw that he did not suffer on account of his singular disinterestedness, and heaped wealth upon him.

Another peculiar distinction which he gave him was the title of Duke of Auerstädt. When, about the beginning of 1808, Napoleon first began to bestow titles of honour, as distinct from titles of sovereignty, he acted upon a very definite plan. No one was to receive a title which did not enhance the glory of the Emperor. The less famous Marshals received ducal fiefs in Italy; Macdonald was made Duke of Tarentum, Mortier Duke of Treviso, Bessières Duke of Istria. With the title the Marshals received the fief with some show of sovereignty, but they were allowed—encouraged, in fact—to sell their sovereignties to the Empire as soon as received.

The more famous Marshals took their titles from the battles in which they had taken part; Lannes was made Duke of Montebello, Ney Duke of Elchingen. Lefebvre, whose reputation for republicanism Napoleon repeatedly employed to hallmark his own actions, was created Duke of Dantzic. Soult strove to obtain for himself the title of Duke of Austerlitz, but Napoleon put the idea impatiently aside. He wished to reserve the glory of Austerlitz entirely for himself, and Soult had to be content with the title of Duke of Dalmatia, which set him in the lower class of Marshal. But Napoleon’s jealousy went further than this. He did not want to give anyone a title derived from a battle which had not been fought under his own direction. He forced the title of Duke of Rivoli upon Masséna, although that Marshal had to his credit the far greater achievements of Zürich and Genoa. When it was suggested to him that it would be a kindly action to make the unhappy, neglected Jourdan Duke of Fleurus, he replied “Never! I might as well make him King of France at once.”

To this rule Napoleon only made two exceptions. One was Kellermann, whom he made Duke of Valmy, but by now Kellermann was too old (he was seventy-three) to be any danger, while Valmy was a landmark in French history. The other was Davout.

The Duke of Auerstädt had before him in 1807 a task which would give his sternness and devotion to duty free play. He had command of at least a hundred thousand men. For the support of these he received not a sou from the French Government—everything, pay, provisions and equipment, had to be wrung from the wretched countries in which they were in garrison. From Prussia Davout had to grind the enormous indemnity which Napoleon had imposed. In Westphalia he had to see that Jerome Bonaparte did not make too big a fool of himself. He had to keep a sharp eye upon the movements of Austria. Besides all this, he had to govern the infant Grand Duchy of Warsaw, where he had simultaneously to assure the Poles that an independent kingdom of Poland would shortly be set up, and the Russians and Austrians that an independent kingdom of Poland would never be set up.

And yet he succeeded. Throughout northern central Europe he built himself up a reputation as the justest brute in Christendom. His army was well fed and well equipped, but he did his best to make the burden as light as possible. He saw that Napoleon’s outrageous demands of Prussia were complied with, but at the same time he was not unnecessarily harsh. He sent Polish regiments to fight in Spain (at Poland’s expense) while he kept French troops about Warsaw (also at Poland’s expense), but he managed to persuade the Poles that such a proceeding was just. He carried out Napoleon’s orders both in the spirit and to the letter, but after that he made enormous and successful efforts to minimize the damage done. What would a second Davout have done in Spain?

Early in 1809 his proceedings were interrupted. Austria, undaunted by the conference of Erfurt, and inspirited by the success of the Spaniards, was on the move again. Davout had to concentrate his enormous force on the upper Danube as rapidly as possible, with a weather eye lifting in case of a further effort by Prussia, and, once there, he had to weld his troops once more into divisions and army corps. From all quarters other troops were being rushed to the scene of action, and in command of them all was the hesitating Berthier. Napoleon, with his hands full with the Spanish muddle, tried to direct operations from Paris as long as possible. The natural result was that when the Emperor arrived at headquarters he found his army divided and in an apparently hopeless position, with the skilful and resolute Archduke Charles thrusting enormous forces between the dislocated wings. Only a supreme effort could save the situation, but the situation was saved. Napoleon gathered together Lannes, Vandamme and Masséna, and hurled them forward. He called upon Davout to achieve the impossible, and make a flank march of thirty miles while in actual contact with superior forces. The impossible was achieved. Davout brought his men safely through, to gain along with the other forces the shattering victory of Eckmühl.

Davout’s performance is practically unique in military history. A year or two later the disastrous possibilities of a flank march were thoroughly demonstrated at Salamanca, where Marmont, who prided himself upon his tactical ability, was utterly routed in an hour’s fighting by Wellington. Marmont had good troops, and his army was as nearly as possible equal to Wellington’s, but this did not save him. Davout’s force was partly composed of new troops, and of disaffected allies, while his opponents were nearly twice his strength. Only the most consummate daring combined with the maximum of vigilance and skill could have saved Davout, but Davout was saved. The title of Prince of Eckmühl which Napoleon bestowed upon him was well deserved.

The next outstanding incident in the campaign was Napoleon’s first defeat in the open field. He dared just a little too much in attempting to cross a broad river in the face of a powerful opponent, with the result that he was beaten back with frightful loss. Lannes was mortally wounded; the bridges by which the army had crossed were broken before Davout’s turn came to pass over.

For a while the Empire tottered. A prompt offensive on the part of the Archduke Charles might have overthrown it, but his army, too, had been hard hit, and he delayed. Napoleon’s frantic exertions turned the scale in the end. He claimed Aspern as a victory, and so skilfully did he make his claim that for a time he was believed throughout Europe. Masséna was created Prince of Essling, to conceal the defeat—in much the same way as the Earl of Chatham might have been made Duke of Walcheren in the same year. The army of Italy, under Eugène, Macdonald and Marmont outmarched their opponents, and arrived in time to enable the Emperor to cast the die once more.

He passed the Danube a little lower down than at his previous attempt, turned the Austrian position, and fought the battle of Wagram on practically equal terms. It was evenly contested, too. Masséna on the left was beaten back until the flank was nearly turned; Bernadotte’s Saxon corps was repulsed in terrible disorder, and the French reserves were drawn in at an alarming rate. A hundred French guns, massed in the centre, battered the Austrian line, and Macdonald led his corps, formed in a gigantic square, against the gap. But he suffered terribly from the Austrian artillery, and his men left the ranks in thousands. In the end, it was Davout on the right who won the battle for the French, for he turned the Austrian left and began to roll up their line; the Austrians fell sullenly back. It was a defeat, not a disaster, but the Austrians sued for peace immediately afterwards.

After Wagram Davout went back to his old post in the north. Month by month the position grew more and more difficult, as the topsy-turvy finances of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw verged nearer to bankruptcy, and the spirit of nationality grew in Prussia. But there was never a hint of open rebellion as long as the bald-headed little man was at the head of affairs; the Tugendbund might plot in secret; English agents might stir up trouble at every opportunity; Blücher might fume and Alexander might plan, but Davout’s grip was never loosened.

At last, after three years, came the Russian campaign. Half a million Frenchmen and allies came thronging forward to the Niemen. A hundred thousand of these men were under Davout’s command, and, with Napoleon’s new supply arrangements breaking down at once, they had to plunder in order to live. Prussia was left behind secretly raging, and the doomed army pressed forward over the barren plains of Lithuania. Everything seemed to go wrong. The half-trained levies could not perform the feats of marching which had gained such marvellous successes at Ulm and after Jena; the Marshals wrangled among themselves; while Napoleon, angered by the failure of his plans, dealt out reprimands right and left until the irritation became almost unbearable. Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, was placed under Davout’s command in consequence of his blundering, but he could not endure such a state of affairs, threw up his command, and went back to the softer delights of his palace at Cassel.

With Moscow almost in sight, the Russians delivered battle. Napoleon’s powers were fast waning, and he paid no heed to Davout’s urgent pleading that he should be allowed to turn their left. At Wagram he had exclaimed, “You will see Davout gain another battle for me,” but at Borodino he had forgotten this. The battle resolved itself into a series of horribly costly frontal assaults, and the victors lost as heavily as their opponents. There followed five weeks’ useless delay in Moscow; Napoleon waited for Alexander to plead for terms, and Alexander refused to consider the matter as long as a Frenchman remained on Russian soil. No course was open to the French except retreat, and retreat they did. There is no need to describe in detail that exhausted famished army crawling across the Russian plains; sufficient to say that of the half million men who had advanced in 1812 hardly thirty thousand remained to rally on the Oder in 1813.

Napoleon left them as soon as hope was lost. He tore across Europe from Smorgoni to Paris in the depth of winter with hardly a stop, bent on making a last effort to save his Empire. Murat was left in command, but Murat flinched from his task. Three weeks of command were enough for him, and then he said he was ill. Ill or not, he travelled from Posen to Naples in a fortnight, in January weather.

Somehow Davout and Ney and Eugène de Beauharnais held the wretched Grand Army together until Napoleon’s return, and then Davout was sent off to hold down Northern Germany once more. It was a task which might have daunted anybody. Prussia was ablaze with hatred of Napoleon, and Prussian troops were swarming forward to the attack. The citizens of the Hanseatic towns, ruined by the Continental system, and bankrupted by Napoleon’s requisitions, were in a state of sullen rebellion. Davout’s troops consisted merely of invalids, cripples and raw levies, while the loyalty of most of them was to be doubted. Bernadotte, once a Marshal of France, was leading his Swedes against his old countrymen. Benningsen with a Russian army advanced to the attack. But Davout’s grip was upon Hamburg, and it was a grip which nothing could break. He held on through the summer of 1813, while the armistice of Pleissvitz gave hope of relief. He held on through the autumn, while Austria joined the ranks of Napoleon’s enemies. The victory of Dresden was followed by the defeats of the Katzbach, of Kulm, of Gross Beeren, of Dennewitz, and finally by the complete disaster of Leipzig, but Davout still held on to Hamburg. Provisions began to fail, the populace broke into insurrection; it was known that the Allies were over the Rhine, that Napoleon was carrying on a hopeless struggle in France itself. Marmont, Mortier, Ney, in turn deserted, but Davout still held on to Hamburg. It was not until the end of April, when the Bourbons were once more on the throne of France, and a Bourbon general was sent to take command, that he relaxed his grip. Half his army had died during the horrors of the siege, enormous offers had been made to him for his submission, the famished inhabitants had implored him to surrender, but he had allowed nothing to interfere with his fulfilment of his duty.

The Bourbons tried to have him shot for this on his return, but such a feat was beyond their power. Thus he was not asked, nor did he ask to take the oath of allegiance.

On Napoleon’s return from Elba Davout was the only Marshal who could join him without staining his honour. Marmont stayed by the Bourbons, for fear of the consequences of his surrender of Paris; Macdonald and St. Cyr, Oudinot and Victor, held to their oaths. Ney flagrantly broke his word to serve his old Emperor once more; Masséna, as was to be expected, tried to keep a middle course. Davout was the one man free from the Bourbon taint, and in consequence Napoleon had to leave him behind as Governor of Paris and Minister of War to hold France quiet during the Waterloo campaign.

Could it have been otherwise, Waterloo might well have been a victory for France. We can picture Davout in command of the left wing in the advance over the Sambre. In place of Ney’s bungled staff work and haphazard arrangements, there would have been a prompt and orderly movement. The columns would have been kept closed up, instead of straggling for miles. Davout’s accurate, lengthy reports would have kept Napoleon clearly informed as to the situation. A prompt attack on the morning of the 16th of June at Quatre Bras would have cleared the air effectively, and d’Erlon, instead of wasting his strength in marching and counter-marching, could have been employed to much better advantage at Ligny. Ney’s position at Quatre Bras was, as a matter of fact, very like Davout’s at Auerstädt eleven years before. Davout succeeded at Auerstädt; Ney failed at Quatre Bras. With Davout in command of the left wing in the Waterloo campaign, the history of the world might have been different.

At Waterloo, when the cavalry was dashing itself to pieces on the English squares, Napoleon is said to have cried, “Oh, for one hour of Murat.” Murat by that time would not have made an atom of difference. The destiny of France had been decided two days before at Quatre Bras. One hour of Davout would have been worth fifty hours of Murat.

After Waterloo had been lost and won, for a few days it was the Prince of Eckmühl who ruled France. He pulled the army together, and thereby saved Napoleon’s life, for he managed to stave off the Prussian army while Napoleon fled to Rochefort. But with the return of the Bourbons he sank into oblivion, and died of pneumonia eight years afterwards almost unnoticed.

Such was the end of the one great officer of Napoleon’s whose honour had never been sullied, who had always done his duty, and who had never failed. His enemies hated him as well as feared him; his friends feared him as well as trusted him. His one aim in life was to do his duty; in this aim he stood almost alone in his age, and in its achievement he stood quite alone.

EUGÈNE DE BEAUHARNAIS
(VICEROY OF ITALY PRINCE DE VENISE)

CHAPTER IX
MORE PALADINS

WHEN the Marshalate was inaugurated, the first list afforded many opportunities for dissatisfaction, both among those included and those excluded.

Men like Macdonald and St. Cyr, of high reputation and undoubted talents, found themselves ignored for political reasons, while giants of the Republican armies like Masséna found that Napoleon’s family feeling had given comparatively unknown men like Murat seniority over them. Masséna’s curt reply to congratulations on his new appointment was “Yes, one of fourteen,” and it must indeed have been galling to him to have Bessières, Moncey and other nonentities raised to a rank equal to his own.

For in 1804 Masséna towered in achievement head and shoulders above all other French soldiers, with the exception of Napoleon. He was of Italian extraction (many people said Jewish-Italian, and hinted that Masséna was a euphonized version of Manasseh), and he had served fourteen years in Louis XVI.’s regiment of Italian mercenaries. Quitting the army, he had plunged into the various shady employments of the Côte d’Azur. Smuggling by land and by sea, coast trading, wine-dealing, fruit-selling, he tried his hand at them all, mainly successfully.

But with the revolution came his chance. In two years he was general of division, and he actually had under his orders at Toulon a certain Napoleon Bonaparte. For two campaigns Masséna was the life and soul of the army of the Riviera; Dumerbion, Schérer, and even Moreau turned to him for counsel. Then suddenly Barras sent Napoleon as commander-in-chief in 1796. It is perhaps the greatest tribute to Napoleon’s personality that as a young man of twenty-six he was able to compel obedience from a crowd of generals, many years his senior both in age and experience. Masséna yielded place to him grudgingly, but Napoleon found a golden salve for his injured amour-propre. The campaign of Italy laid the foundations of the enormous fortune which Masséna later built up. Every general pillaged and peculated right and left in those two memorable years. Napoleon himself was moderate; his fortune at the end of 1797 only amounted to about two hundred thousand pounds sterling; Masséna and Augereau acquired about half a million each.

But if they could steal, these men could also fight. Masséna was the supreme master of tactics, and it was his division which at that time was given the most difficult tasks. Battle followed battle, Montenotte, Mondovi, Lodi, Lonato, Castiglione, Mantua, Arcola, Rivoli, until at last Austria succumbed; and by that time, what with gold and glory, the generals of the army of Italy were Napoleon’s slaves.

Napoleon had served another purpose, too, in enriching Masséna, for his wealth kept him quiet while Napoleon was in Egypt. In 1798 the Directory made a curious blunder. Their army of Rome, maddened by the peculations of generals and commissaries, which left the men half starved and in rags, broke out into mutiny. The man who was sent to quell them was Masséna! The mutiny naturally redoubled in intensity, and Masséna was compelled to give up his command. But at once more congenial work was given him. Another coalition had declared war upon France, and the Archduke Charles in Germany and Suvaroff in Italy were gaining success after success. Masséna was sent to command in Switzerland, the last buttress of France. Upon him depended all the hopes of the Republic, and well he justified the Republic’s confidence. He clung on desperately, holding back immensely superior numbers. At last the Aulic Council at Vienna blundered more badly than usual, and Masséna grasped at the opportunity, as if it had been a moneybag. He flung himself upon Korsakoff at Zürich, and practically destroyed his army. Suvaroff, marching over the St. Gotthard, only escaped the same fate by a desperate march along the wildest paths of Switzerland. France was saved in the same hour as Napoleon seized the reins of the Government.

By varied cajolery Napoleon next prevailed upon Masséna to take command of the army of Italy, and to hold back the Austrian army while he himself organized the army of reserve. Napoleon had assured Masséna that the army of Italy was in good condition, and that supplies and reinforcements would be sent him in abundance, but as soon as Masséna arrived he found how little trust could be placed in the First Consul’s word. The men were starving and dispirited, and they were attacked by vastly superior forces. Somehow Masséna held them together, but he was forced back into Genoa and closely besieged. For the troops there was some sort of food, hair-powder and cocoa mainly, but for the inhabitants there was—nothing. For nine weeks Masséna held out. The troops died in hundreds by the sword, by disease, by starvation; the inhabitants died in thousands, and their bodies littered the streets. The Austrian prisoners who were taken starved to death in the hulks in the harbour. No wonder that Masséna said that after the siege he had not one hair left which was not white on his whole body.

At last surrender was necessary. Napoleon had promised him prompt relief, but the relief never came. Day by day Masséna had listened for the thunder of his guns in the near-by Apennines, but it had never reached his ears. The capitulation was signed, and the French marched out. But while Masséna had been clinging to Genoa, Napoleon’s army was swinging over the Alps. Ten days after the surrender of Genoa, Marengo gave Italy once more to the French.

To Masséna, covered with glory, Napoleon gave the command of the army of Italy on his own return to Paris; but the arrangement did not long endure. Within two months Masséna’s avarice had got the better of him, and he was removed from his command and placed upon half-pay on account of his sharp practice.

This retirement endured for four years, but in the Austerlitz campaign Masséna received the command-in-chief in Italy. If he accomplished little here, at least he prevented the enemy from achieving any success, and after Austerlitz and the treaty of Presburg he was sent to conquer Naples for Joseph Bonaparte. The campaign was a mere military promenade, but it ended, as did so many of Masséna’s commands, in his compulsory resignation on account of his illicit money-making. On this occasion Napoleon improved on his previous practice, and confiscated over a hundred thousand pounds which Masséna had accumulated in a Livornese bank.

Once again Napoleon summoned Masséna to his aid in 1807, and at Pultusk and Friedland Masséna divided the laurels with Lannes and Ney. But it was the Wagram campaign which brought him the greatest glory, as it did also to Davout. At Eckmühl Masséna performed the turning movement which gained the victory after Davout’s holding attack. At Essling it was Masséna who held the reeling French line together until darkness brought relief. At Wagram Masséna, crippled just before by a fall from his horse, led his corps in a coach drawn by white horses, the mark for all the enemy’s guns. Small wonder was it that the end of the campaign found Masséna both Duke of Rivoli and Prince of Essling, with a pension of twenty thousand pounds a year in addition to his pay, his perquisites and his enormous savings.

But this was the zenith of Masséna’s fame; it was to reach its nadir immediately afterwards. Masséna had lived hard all his life; he had spared himself no more than he had spared his men, and in addition he had at intervals indulged in unbridled debauchery. By 1810 Masséna was an old, worn-out, satiated man, although he was only fifty-five years of age. All he wished to do was to retire and live in peace, but Napoleon was at his wits’ end to find someone who could be trusted in Spain. Masséna found the command thrust upon him, and he was forced to accept. Then followed the blundering campaign of Torres Vedras. Blunders in the choice of route, blunders in the attack at Busaco, blunders at Torres Vedras, and finally, in 1811, the crowning blunder of Fuentes d’Onoro.

These blunders might have been foreseen; Masséna was old and feeble; he knew nothing of Spain; he took women with him on the campaign; his corps commanders were Ney, Junot and Reynier, all men of hot temper and inferior talent; while opposed to him was the inflexible Wellington with his incomparable English infantry.

In March, 1811, Masséna was removed from his command. He crept miserably away, to bury his shame in the retirement of the Marseilles command. From that time forward his one aim was to enjoy his riches in comfort; he made submission to the Bourbons, and then reverted to Napoleon in 1815; after Waterloo he went back to the Bourbons.

But though he retained his wealth and his rank, there was yet further trouble awaiting him. His treason in 1815 had not been sufficiently extensive in that age of treason for him to suffer any penalty, and Louis XVIII., like the most humane Mikado, determined to make the punishment fit the crime as far as possible by appointing him one of Ney’s judges. Masséna must have had a guilty conscience, and the horror of having to condemn his former colleague for the same crime as his own weighed heavily on him. At the same time the atrocious murder of his friend and fellow Marshal Brune during the White Terror at Avignon was a further blow. Tortured by remorse, hated by all parties alike, worn out with a life lived at high pressure, Masséna died in 1817 at the age of fifty-nine.

Masséna and Davout were the two foremost officers of Napoleon; the great contrast between them is due to the fact that one of them was guided by a strict sense of duty, the other merely by avarice.

There was another Marshal who is frequently considered to be at least the equal of these two, and the fact that he is so considered is peculiarly illustrative of his whole career, for Soult was for ever thrusting himself into the limelight and being elbowed out of it. Like many of the other Marshals, he rose from the ranks of the old regular army, and he first attained high rank by attracting Masséna’s attention. He was second-in-command to that Marshal during the siege of Genoa, until he was taken prisoner during a sortie. He received his Marshalate in 1804, at a time when he was commanding a corps of the army at Boulogne, and he continued in command during the historic march to the Danube. At Austerlitz he was in command of the centre, and all his life he considered that the battle was won mainly by himself. He ignored Davout’s splendid defence of the lake defiles, Murat’s wonderful handling of the cavalry reserve, Lannes’ management of the left, and Bernadotte’s assault of the centre; he, and he alone, he said, was responsible for Austerlitz. He was greatly disappointed when he was created Duke of Dalmatia in 1808; he claimed that the only fitting title for him was Duke of Austerlitz. Napoleon ignored his pleadings.

Soult fought at Jena, Eylau and Friedland, 1806-1807, and was then sent to Spain. To him was entrusted the pursuit of Sir John Moore to Corunna, and it cannot be denied that he failed in his mission. Moore was never seriously engaged throughout the retreat, and when finally Soult caught him up at Corunna he was easily beaten back, despite his superior numbers. But for all that Soult had the impertinence to claim a victory.

To him next was assigned the conquest of Portugal; all he conquered was the northern extremity; he was two months late in his arrival at Oporto, and once there he settled down and would not budge. The reason for this delay soon emerged. Soult was scheming for the crown of Portugal. But the plan evaporated promptly when Wellington unexpectedly passed the Douro, surprised Soult in his cantonments and bundled him out of Portugal, compelling him to abandon his guns, his train, his treasure, his sick—everything, in fact, except what was on his men’s backs.

Had Wellington ever suffered a similar reverse he would probably have received the same treatment as did Admiral Byng fifty years before, but Napoleon was lenient and retained Soult in command. The new task assigned to him was the conquest of Andalusia, and against the wretched Spanish armies he achieved some remarkable successes. Seville and Granada fell before him; and he quietly proceeded to establish himself firmly and make his fortune. He looted cathedrals and treasuries, and sent the proceeds home. He ignored the Government of Madrid, and conducted himself like an independent and absolute monarch. Cadiz defied him, and all the efforts of his subordinate, Victor, Duke of Belluno, could not gain the place for him.

Masséna, held up at Torres Vedras by Wellington, with his army starving and disorganized, appealed to Soult for help. It was grudgingly given—too late. By the time Soult was ready to move upon the Tagus Masséna had already fallen back, utterly ruined. Soult was eventually stirred to action by Beresford’s siege of Badajoz, but he met with an unexpected reverse at Albuera (which, characteristically, he claimed as a victory), and after that he was content to hold on to Andalusia until at last Wellington’s victory at Salamanca and capture of Madrid compelled him to abandon his conquests. So exasperated was Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain, by Soult’s independence that he demanded Soult’s recall, threatening abdication in the event of refusal. Napoleon complied, and during the beginning of 1813 Soult commanded the Guard in Germany, but after Vittoria he was sent back to try and keep the English out of France.

It was during this campaign of the Pyrenees that Soult’s talents were exhibited at their best, but even here he failed. His manœuvres, concentrations and determined counter-attacks are models of technical skill, but the fire, resolution and insight of greater generals are sadly lacking. He certainly delayed Wellington, and achieved a fair success considering the means at his disposal, but he was beaten back across the Pyrenees, back from Bayonne, from Orthez, and at last from Toulouse. Napoleon’s abdication found Soult’s army rapidly disintegrating, and it is certain that the Duke of Dalmatia could not have continued the struggle much longer.

In 1814 and 1815 Soult conducted himself as might have been expected of a self-seeker. He submitted to the Bourbons, but went over to Napoleon as soon as the Emperor was on the throne after the descent from Elba.

Napoleon appointed him chief of staff during the Waterloo campaign. The choice was unfortunate in the event, but it is difficult to see what other course the Emperor could have pursued. Of the five Marshals fit for service of whom Napoleon could dispose, Davout had to be left to hold down Paris, and Suchet had to guard the south. Ney was obviously useless for staff work, and Grouchy had neither the brains nor the prestige for a position of such vital responsibility. So Soult took charge of the staff, and the staff work was badly done. Blunders were committed even in the orders given for the crossing of the Sambre, and subsequently delay followed delay and error followed error in fatal sequence. Ney, d’Erlon and Grouchy were in turn misled by ambiguous orders. The responsibility for the failure of Waterloo is undoubtedly partly Soult’s.

Naturally enough, Soult was proscribed after the second Restoration, but after four years’ exile, he managed to ingratiate himself with the Bourbons, and climbed steadily back to power by the aid of hypocrisy and tuft-hunting. The July revolution brought him further power, and he was one of the main props of Louis Philippe’s authority. In fact the citizen king thought so much of him that he made Soult Marshal-General of France, thus placing him on a level with Saxe and Turenne. He lived to the venerable age of eighty-one, and died at last rich and honoured above all the other soldiers of France. His reputation grew steadily after the wars were over, partly on account of Napier’s liking for him, partly on account of the natural tendency displayed by the English to over-value a beaten antagonist, and partly on account of his own deft powers of self-advertisement. His career is a striking example of the success of cold, self-contained mediocrity.

There is only one other Marshal of Napoleon for whom any claims to greatness have been made, and that is Suchet, Duke of Albufera. One of the most interesting points about his career is that he had no military training whatever before the Revolution. As a young man of twenty-three years of age he enlisted; at twenty-five he was a colonel. He made friends with the young Bonaparte at the siege of Toulon, and later fought in the Italian campaign of 1796, gaining command of a brigade in 1797.

With the rank of general of division he served Masséna and Joubert, and while Masséna held Genoa in 1800 Suchet guarded the frontiers of France itself on the Var.

But for eight years longer Suchet had to be content with the rank of a mere divisional commander, leading a division of Lannes’ corps at Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland. At last the wholesale toppling of reputations in the Spanish war brought him his chance, and he received command of the army of Aragon. To say the least, at first his position was rather awkward. His army was composed of raw troops, shaken by the horrors of the siege of Saragossa; the Spaniards were in arms against him on all sides; he was compelled by the neglect of the Paris Government to live on the country; while to crown it all he was expected to obey not only the orders from Paris but also the frequently contradictory ones from Joseph at Madrid.

We must give Suchet credit for coming through the ordeal exceedingly well. After an “unfortunate incident” at Alcaniz, Suchet got his men well in hand, and, by victories at Maria and Belchite, he cleared Aragon of the enemy and proceeded to subdue Catalonia. His way was barred in every direction by fortresses, but, thanks partly to the folly of the Spaniards and partly to his own resolution and determination, he conquered the country inch by inch. Somewhat cynically, in his memoirs, he tells us that at the storming of Lerida he took care to drive as many women and children as possible into the citadel, and then by a vigorous bombardment he so daunted the garrison that they surrendered. To what total the casualties among the women and children amounted before the surrender he does not say.

Catalonia in his power, Suchet moved on to the reduction of Valencia. His previous campaigns repeated themselves. Battle followed siege, and siege followed battle, until at last Suchet ruled all Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia. Soult had already conquered Andalusia, so that all Spain might, by straining the truth a little, be said to be in the hands of the French. For his achievements Suchet received a Marshal’s bâton, the title of Duke of Albufera and half a million francs.

However, he was not fated to retain his conquests long. Wellington’s victory at Vittoria in 1813 brought about Suchet’s evacuation of Valencia, just as Salamanca had caused Soult to abandon Andalusia.

The same year an Anglo-Sicilian expedition under Murray landed in Catalonia, and once more set aflame the embers of the guerilla warfare. Suchet himself, in action against unwontedly disciplined enemies, met with a serious reverse at Castalla, but Murray was too much of a nincompoop to follow up his success. In the end Murray once more took ship, and Suchet still held Catalonia and most of Aragon. At this time he had a great opportunity to turn against Wellington, who had his hands full with Soult’s offensive in the Pyrenees, but he let the chance go. Immediately afterwards Lord William Bentinck, who had succeeded to Sir John Murray, kept him busy until the fall of the Empire. Soult’s and Napoleon’s demands had deprived Suchet of his best troops, and he did all that could be expected of him with the few men left to him.

In 1814 Suchet submitted to the Bourbons; in 1815 he betrayed them. During the Hundred Days he was ordered to secure the south-east with a few thousand men, and though unsuccessful, he accomplished much. After the Restoration the Bourbons refused to re-employ him.

Napoleon is credited with saying that Suchet was the best of his Marshals after Masséna’s decay, and also that with two men like Suchet he would have held Spain against all endeavours. If Napoleon really did say this (and O’Meara’s testimony is untrustworthy) Napoleon was wrong. The only time Suchet encountered English troops he was beaten; he was just as selfish and self-seeking as the other Marshals in Spain; he refused help whenever he could; and his success was due in a great part to the blunders of his opponents. Every French general and Marshal (Dupont excepted) succeeded against Spaniards; it was only against the English that they failed. Napoleon might just as well have said that Bessières was his best Marshal, because Bessières beat the Spaniards at Rio Seco while Masséna failed at Torres Vedras.

The one Marshal of Napoleon’s whose career is more interesting in its pre-Revolutionary stages than under Napoleon is Augereau, Duke of Castiglione. He was a gigantic, swaggering fellow with a nose rendered brilliant by alcohol, devil-may-care and reckless, the ideal soldier of fortune. For he was a soldier of fortune. As a young man in the army of Louis XVI. he had killed one of his own officers on parade, and fled from the country with the police at his heels. In exile, he wandered through the East, joined the Russian army, took part in the storming of Ismail under Suvaroff, and then deserted. Next he joined the Prussian army, and served in the Prussian Guard, but once more he deserted. Desertion from the Prussian army was a difficult matter, but Augereau achieved it by banding together all the malcontents and fighting his way to the frontier.

On the birth of the Dauphin (later the unhappy Louis XVII.) an amnesty was proclaimed in France, and Augereau took advantage of it to rejoin his old regiment, but once more tired of continuous service and got himself sent off to Naples as an instructor to the Neapolitan troops. From Naples he eloped with a Greek heiress to Lisbon, and in Lisbon he annoyed the Inquisition, so that he was put in prison.

But still his luck held. He escaped from the clutches of the Holy Office, and arrived with his wife in France just after the execution of Louis XVI. His varied military experience naturally obtained him high command in the Republican army; he fought in La Vendée and in the Pyrenees, and then found himself a divisional general under Napoleon in 1796. In this campaign his reckless courage won him fame; he was one of the heroes of the bridge of Lodi, and at Castiglione it was his dashing leadership which gained the day.

Augereau received the command of the army of the Rhine after Bonaparte’s departure for Egypt, but, suspected of intriguing for the supreme power, he was dismissed from his command, and, two years later, he saw the prize fall into Napoleon’s hands. Napoleon bought Augereau’s support with huge gifts of money and, in 1804, a Marshal’s bâton.

During the Austerlitz campaign Augereau was only entrusted with the minor operation of subduing Tyrol, but he fought well at Jena in 1806. At Eylau came disaster. His corps, sent forward against the Russians in the teeth of a blinding snowstorm, lost direction, and was torn to pieces by a furious cannonade. Three-quarters of his men died; he himself, already gravely ill, was badly wounded.

Napoleon was furious. Augereau was sent home in disgrace, and what remained of the 7th Corps was broken up and distributed round the rest of the army. This was practically the end of Augereau’s military life; he held command for a brief space during the war in Spain, but he failed again at Gerona and was superseded. By now he was well over fifty years of age, and dissipation had sapped his vitality. In 1814 and 1815 Augereau received commands of minor importance, his chief duty being the training of recruits, but his heart was not in his work. He lived long enough to betray Napoleon twice and the Bourbons once, and then died in 1816.

These brief biographies are sufficient to illustrate what kind of men the Marshals and their master were. With only a few exceptions they were all traitors, from Napoleon, plotting against the constitution he had sworn to uphold, to Ney, deserting his King. They were greedy, they were unscrupulous, they were selfish. Many of them were men of second-rate talent. Two attributes they had in common—extreme personal bravery and enormous experience in war. Soult is the only Marshal about whom we find any hints of cowardice (and there seems to be no foundation for these hints), while Suchet, Mortier and Brune were the only ones who had not served in the pre-Revolutionary army. None of the Marshals was a heaven-sent genius, and only one, Davout, combined loyalty and honesty with both military and administrative ability.

There is, of course, another side to the picture. If treachery can be excused at all, then there were good excuses for the treachery of every one of the guilty ones; if their talents appear mediocre to us now, it cannot be denied that they were nevertheless highly successful for a long period; if they were self-seeking, they were always ready, despite their riches and titles, to risk their lives in action at the head of their men.

The extravagant praise often meted out collectively to Napoleon’s subordinates is undeserved, but somehow one can hardly avoid coming to the conclusion that a nation might well consider itself fortunate could it muster a similar array of men in high places.

AUGEREAU DUC DE CASTIGLIONE

CHAPTER X
BROTHERS

NAPOLEON was one of a large family, children of a shiftless father and a wonderful mother. Much the same might be said of a large number of other successful men—Moltke and Lincoln, for instance. But it is doubtful whether any importance from a eugenic point of view can be attached to this circumstance, for although some of the other Bonapartes showed undoubted talent in various directions, not one of them has ever displayed greatness comparable to the Emperor’s. Biologically, Napoleon might be said to be a “sport,” a “mutation,” as de Vries would say. Yet even this theory is open to controversy, for mutations usually breed true, and none of Napoleon’s children ever showed, as far as can be ascertained, any really striking amount of talent. Napoleon may thus be considered to be an isolated incident in his family history, one of the many immovable facts which are so gingerly skirted round by eugenists and other theorists.

What achievements can be ascribed to the brothers of the man who achieved so much? A few impracticable suggestions, a few novels (diluted St. Pierre, most of them), a few lost battles, a few lost kingdoms; beyond that—nothing. Louis was the father of Napoleon III., a clever man with many natural disadvantages mingled with his advantages. Lucien saved one unpleasant situation when president of the Council of Five Hundred in 1799. Jerome’s grandson was a fairly eminent lawyer of the United States. The other Bonapartes were like their fathers and grandfathers before them, dilettanti, wobblers, unstable and irresponsible.

But useless as were Napoleon’s brothers to him, he nevertheless bore with them patiently for years. A clannish clinging together is to be noticed in all their dealings, both while they were obscure and while they were powerful. An early Corsican environment may perhaps account for this, or perhaps it is to be ascribed to the intense pride in himself which Napoleon felt, and which perhaps was extended to all of his own blood.

Napoleon, the second son, and Joseph, the eldest, were separated from the other brothers and sisters by a gap of some seven years; the intervening children had died in infancy. When Charles Bonaparte, the father, died, therefore, it was upon these two that the headship of the family and the attendant responsibility fell. Joseph had already shown signs of his general uselessness. His mathematics and education generally had been too weak for him to have much chance of success in the army; he flinched from the Church, and therefore returned to Corsica to farm the few acres the Bonapartes possessed, and to carry on somehow, Micawber-like, until something turned up.

Napoleon, just appointed second-lieutenant of artillery, took upon himself to keep and educate the next brother, Louis. Since he had only thirty pounds a year pay, the struggle must have been terribly hard. After a year or two came the temporary success of the Paolists in Corsica, and as the Bonapartes had taken the French side the family had to fly to France for safety, leaving all their property behind. Difficulties increased without number. The French Government, in the throes of the Terror, had voted monetary support for the refugees, but in the excitement of the Toulon rebellion the decree was forgotten, and not a sou was paid. St. Cyr, the State school for girls, was closed, and another mouth, that of the eldest daughter, Elise, had to be fed by the struggling family.

But then everything suddenly changed for the better. Napoleon, after distinguishing himself at Toulon, fought his way up to the rank of chef de brigade. Joseph obtained a commissaryship in the army of Italy through the aid of a fellow Corsican, Salicetti. Then also he married Mademoiselle Clary, daughter of a Marseilles merchant. Her dowry must have appeared enormous to the famished Bonapartes—it amounted to no less than six thousand pounds sterling. None of the Bonapartes could as yet foresee the day when any one of them would spend six thousand pounds on their most trifling whim.

A year later Napoleon saved the Directory from the revolt of the sections, and the family was at last in comparatively smooth water. With Napoleon in command of the Army of the Interior, influence could be brought to bear to help his brothers. Louis became his aide-de-camp. Lucien received a commissaryship with the Army of the North, while immediately afterwards the horizon of possibilities was widened still further by Napoleon’s appointment to the command in Italy and his amazing victories there. Joseph received important diplomatic appointments at Parma and Rome. Louis distinguished himself with the army. Lucien at this time was the black sheep of the family. He threw up one appointment after another; he expressed undesirable opinions with undesirable force, and finally he married a completely illiterate girl of the Midi. However, Napoleon forgave him, and before setting out for Egypt he enabled him to secure election to the Council of Five Hundred. Lucien had always been, even in Corsica, a ranting rhetorician, and in the Council he would be able to indulge his bent to his heart’s desire. Jerome, the youngest brother, was still at school, and he had to master as best he could his disappointment at not accompanying Napoleon to Egypt. Eugène Beauharnais, his schoolfellow, was going; he asked bitterly why he could not go also, leaving out of calculation the years of difference in their ages.

Napoleon returned from Egypt to find his brothers had somewhat improved their positions. Lucien was president of the Council of Five Hundred; Joseph’s diplomatic services had enabled him to enter intimately into the Directory circles, so that Napoleon was at once able to plunge into the welter of politics. The coup d’état of the 19th Brumaire was planned. Joseph acted as intermediary between Napoleon, Sièyes, Ducos, Bernadotte (now his brother-in-law), Fouché and Moreau. Lucien made himself responsible for the Council, and arranged for the vital meeting to be held at Versailles. Their united efforts gained for Napoleon the command of the Army of the Interior. Everything was in readiness. On the morning of the 19th the Upper House, the Council of Ancients, readily bowed to the will of the great soldier, but the Council of Five Hundred were not so willing to pronounce their own sentence of extinction.

Murmurs arose and grew louder, and when Napoleon appeared before them he was greeted with fierce cries. Half of the Five Hundred were old sans-culottes, men who had gambled with their lives for power under Hébert and Danton, and when Napoleon, for the only time in his career, flinched from danger, the dreadful cry which had announced Robespierre’s fall arose. “Hors la loi! Hors la loi!” shouted the deputies. Napoleon staggered out of the council hall, apparently ruined.

Lucien Bonaparte leaped into the breach. He spoke fervently on behalf of his brother, but he was shouted down by the furious deputies. Somebody demanded a motion of outlawry against Napoleon; Lucien refused to put it to the vote. Neither side would give way, and the passions grew fiercer and fiercer. Suddenly Lucien tore off the insignia of his office, and even as he did so the door flew open and Napoleon’s troops burst in. Leclerc, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, was at their head. “The Council is dissolved,” said Leclerc, and the soldiers cleared the hall with fixed bayonets. Napoleon had utilized to the full the few minutes Lucien had gained for him. He had inflamed the soldiers with tales of treachery and assassination. On the evening of the same day a rump of the Council met under Lucien’s presidency and confirmed Napoleon in all the powers he demanded.

At first sight this action of Lucien’s appears invaluable. Nevertheless, on further consideration one realizes that Napoleon could have succeeded without it. When Bernadotte was King of Sweden, he told the French Ambassador, apropos of some news regarding French parliamentary criticism, that if he were King of France with two hundred thousand soldiers at his back he would put his tongue out at the chamber of deputies. Napoleon at the time of the coup d’état, had not merely two hundred thousand soldiers, but the whole weight of public opinion at his back. No decree of outlawry by a discredited Council of Five Hundred could injure him.

For all this, Lucien was of great use to Napoleon during the Consulate. As Tribune, he employed his undoubted parliamentary gifts to foist on the legislative various unpalatable measures. He skilfully defended the proposed Legion of Honour to an acutely suspicious House, and then finally he effected a judicious weeding of the Senate and Corps Législatif during the retirements of 1802. For all these services he was made Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, and a Senator; he received a large official income and a palace (Poppesdorf on the Moselle), while it seemed as if it would not be long before he received royal honours. Napoleon proposed that he should act as French agent in the Kingdom of Etruria; the Queen was recently widowed; a marriage would follow naturally, and Lucien would be proclaimed king. As far as Napoleon knew, there was no legal bar to such an arrangement, for Lucien’s illiterate wife had died some time back, but the proposal forced Lucien to make an announcement he should have made earlier. In 1803 he had secretly married a widow, Madame Jouberthon, who had been his mistress for a year, and actually had borne him a child the day before the ceremony.

This was the end of things as far as Lucien was concerned. Napoleon quarrelled violently with him, and Lucien left the country. He lived for a time in Rome, where Pius VII. made him Prince of Canino, but had to move on at the French occupation. He tried to reach the United States, but the English prevented this, as they feared he might have designs on Spanish America. They could have known little about the dilatory, hesitating æsthete to imagine he was capable of any action of importance. Lucien was brought a prisoner to England, and he promptly settled down and made himself comfortable at Ludlow, perfectly contented to enjoy his books, his scientific dabblings, his pictures, in peace. Once only did he rouse himself, and that was during the Hundred Days. The old clan feeling apparently re-awoke, and he was at Napoleon’s side during that brief period. But as soon as Napoleon had left for St. Helena, and three months in a Piedmontese prison had cooled his own blood, he went back to Rome and continued his placid existence until his death in 1840. Two or three feeble novels and one frigid epic stand to his credit—further comment appears unnecessary; if a man with Lucien’s opportunities abandons them in favour of a mild life of artistic enjoyment, he must be either a great man or a very small man, and Lucien was not a great man.

But Lucien had at any rate the hardihood to stand up to his terrible brother about his marriage; Louis and Jerome gave way in a ridiculous fashion.

Louis allowed himself to be persuaded into marrying Hortense Beauharnais, Napoleon’s step-daughter, thereby making his sister-in-law Josephine into his mother-in-law as well. No love was lost between the newly-married pair, and they drifted apart after a month or two of married life. A child, Napoleon Charles, was born at the end of 1802, and Napoleon was popularly credited with being its incestuous father. At first he did his utmost to check these rumours, but later he tried to use them for his own ends—a scheme nipped in the bud by the child’s death from croup in 1807. Napoleon repeatedly tried to reconcile the parents, and on two occasions he met with success. The product of the first reconciliation was a child, Napoleon Louis, born in 1804, who died during the Carbonari insurrection in Italy in 1831, and the product of the second reconciliation was another child who later became Napoleon III.

On Louis, for his compliance, honours and wealth were heaped in profusion. He became a Prince of the Empire, with a million francs a year; as Constable of France, and consequently a Grand Imperial Dignitary, he received one-third of a million francs a year; he was Governor of Paris; a member of the Council of State; in precedence only the Emperor and Joseph Bonaparte came before him. Louis found himself the third person in the Empire with an annual income of about eighty thousand pounds sterling.

Yet even this was not all. Austerlitz had laid Europe at Napoleon’s feet, and he used his power to the full. The rulers of Bavaria and Würtemberg became kings; a terse proclamation announced that the Bourbon house of Naples had “ceased to reign,” and Masséna with sixty thousand men swept into the country to establish Joseph Bonaparte on the throne. Louis was given the kingdom of Holland. Just before, Napoleon had offered the crown of Italy to these two brothers in turn, but they had refused it, partly on account of the utter dependence of Italy upon France, and partly because one condition of acceptance was resignation of all claims upon the throne of France.

Holland, when Louis arrived, was in a bad way. Her people were ground down by remorseless taxation; the Continental system was ruining them rapidly; the conscription was exhausting them; and the outlook generally was hopeless. In fact they were so sunk in despondency that on one occasion, when Napoleon called a plebiscite among them to decide on their Government, only one-sixth of the voters troubled to vote. With the advent of Louis they hoped for better things, but Louis was the kind of man from whom it is better to hope for nothing. His health was bad, his domestic troubles upset him, his terrible brother held him completely under his thumb, and tumbled over like card houses all his tentative schemes of improvement. Matters in Holland went from bad to worse. At intervals the wretched Louis roused himself, and tried to help his subjects, but every time the thunders of Napoleon daunted him.

At last, in 1810, he found the French demanding military occupation of Holland as the only way to secure the thorough observance of the Continental system. A French division was marching on Amsterdam, and fighting was threatened between the Dutch troops and the French. Louis dropped his kingly dignity as if it were red-hot; he abdicated in favour of his son, Napoleon Louis, and then, leaving his wife and family behind, he fled across the frontier and never stopped until he was safe in Austria. Neither threats nor cajoleries on Napoleon’s part were able to bring him back to France and the undignified dignities which were offered him. He settled down with relief in Styria with his books and his artistic studies. A novel or two and some peculiarly unsatisfying memoirs were all he left behind after his death.

Hortense, his wife, found means to console herself. The Comte de Flahault became a frequent visitor at her house in Paris, and a son was eventually born to her, who became, under the Second Empire, the Duc de Morny. Flahault himself was with good reason believed to be a son of the great Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento, so that de Morny had the proud privilege of calling himself a doubly illegitimate grandson of Talleyrand, an illegitimate Beauharnais, an illegitimate Flahault and a natural brother of Napoleon III. A highly satisfactory pedigree, in truth.

It appeared at first as though Joseph Bonaparte would have better fortune than Lucien or Louis. He had already held positions of great responsibility as Ambassador and Plenipotentiary, and in 1806 he became King of Naples. His rule at first was precarious, for although many of the Neapolitans acquiesced in his elevation, the English, and the Bourbons who still held Sicily did their best to make him as uncomfortable as possible. By landing banditti, galley-slaves and unpleasant characters generally, they kept Calabria in a blaze. A small English force was landed, won a battle at Maida, and then had to retire. But with fifty thousand Frenchmen at his back Joseph gradually wore down opposition and established himself more or less firmly.

However, this had hardly been accomplished when in 1808 he was suddenly called back to France and proclaimed King of Spain and the Indies. As regards the Indies, Joseph was divided from them by the British fleet, and if the fleet could preserve Sicily for the Italian Bourbons, it could most certainly preserve America for the Spanish ones. The Atlantic is a good deal wider than the Straits of Messina. As regards Spain the position was only not quite so difficult. The whole country was in rebellion, it is true; three weeks before the streets of Madrid had run knee-deep with the blood of Spaniards and Frenchmen. Some thirty thousand of his subjects had to be beaten in a pitched battle before Joseph could enter his capital, but Napoleon promised him two hundred thousand French soldiers to support him, and Joseph, a little bewildered, a little timorous, proceeded with the adventure. He reached Madrid, and sent his armies forward to subdue his kingdom. In three weeks one army, under Moncey, had been beaten back from Valencia with ruinous losses, while twenty thousand men under Dupont were hemmed in at Baylen and compelled to surrender. A hundred thousand Spaniards were marching on Madrid, and the King of Spain returned with all speed to the security of the French armies on the Ebro. Another battle had to be fought before this sanctuary could be gained. Immediately afterwards came the news that the pestilent English, for ever intruding themselves uninvited, had landed in Portugal, beaten Junot and cleared Portugal of the French by the Convention of Cintra. Napoleon at this moment was at the Conference of Erfurt, trying to disentangle the politics of Russia, Austria, Prussia and the Rhenish Confederation, but as soon as he could, he ended this meeting, issued a few hasty orders to organize his army against a probable attack by Austria in the spring, and rushed back across Europe bent upon settling the affair out of hand. Calling up eighty thousand more troops, he pushed suddenly over the Ebro. The Spanish armies were shattered in three battles at Gamonal, Espinosa and Tudela. Once more Joseph was established in Madrid, but the English again interfered. A skilful thrust by Sir John Moore against the French communications led to the French armies being wheeled against him instead of pushing on to complete the overthrow of the Spaniards. In the middle of this movement Napoleon was called back to Paris on account of the Austrian trouble and the plottings of Talleyrand and Fouché; Joseph was left in Madrid, King of a country ablaze with rebellion, and commander of an army openly contemptuous.

Joseph bore his troubles for five years. Madrid and its environs were just able to bear the expense of his guard and his court; the rest of the country was parcelled out among French generals who ruled their districts despotically as far as the English and the partidas would allow them. Joseph simply did not count; his pathetic appeals to his protectors to combine as he wished were disregarded. Time and again he asked Napoleon either to give him full power or to relieve him of the burden of his mock sovereignty, but Napoleon bullied him into continuing with the farce. In 1812 he lost Madrid for a time, and in 1813 he lost all Spain. He gathered together all his possessions, and tried to retire in as dignified a fashion as possible. Forced by Wellington to fight at Vittoria, he was badly beaten and driven off his line of communications. Everything had to be abandoned. During the flight Joseph left his carriage by one door while the English Hussars entered it by the other, pistol shots were fired at him, and altogether he was hardly treated with the dignity a King deserves. All his court paraphernalia was captured by the English. His carriage was found stuffed with masterpieces; he lost gold to the value of a million sterling, and his plate, his personal belongings, and his lady friends were alike left behind. Soult at last arrived to hold the line of the Pyrenees, and Joseph was ignominiously thrust aside.

He pathetically re-entered the limelight in Paris during the fatal early months of 1814, but he was no longer taken seriously. A proclamation of his to the people of Paris, practically telling them to have no fear for he was with them was received with howls of derision. He pottered helplessly about until the abdication, he figured inconspicuously in the last gathering of the Bonaparte clan during the Hundred Days, and then went off to America. He shook from his shoulders with relief the burden of kingship. As with his brothers, feeble novels and the study of literature engaged his attention from 1815 until his death.

A third brother of Napoleon’s was also a king; he also was thrust on to an unwilling people, and he also was thrust off again in course of time. Jerome was the hope of the family; in 1801, at the age of seventeen, he appeared to give promise of great gifts. Napoleon sent him off to join the navy and to acquire manhood in that hardest of all schools. The First Consul’s plan was defeated, for the officers of the squadron hastened to make the great man’s young brother as comfortable as possible.

When Gantheaume, with vastly superior numbers, fell in with and captured the English Swiftsure, Jerome (seventeen years old, if you please) was sent to receive the English captain’s sword. On the West Indian station the French admiral bluntly told Jerome that he was bound to become an admiral anyway, and he should work hard, not to achieve promotion but to be ready for it. Jerome did not follow his advice. The renewal of war with England in 1803 found Jerome still in the West Indies, and he left his ship (which was subsequently captured) and went off to the United States. At Washington he found the French Ambassador, Pichon, and drew lavishly on him for funds and embarrassed the worthy man enormously. Jerome had quite a nice little holiday in America, travelling about from place to place, making hordes of friends, spending thousands of dollars, and being generally lionized.

The climax was reached when at the age of nineteen he informed the wretched Pichon that he had just married a Miss Elizabeth Patterson, daughter of a worthy Baltimore merchant, and asked him for further funds to support his new condition. Pichon was horrified. The marriage was illegal by the law of France, it is true, but Jerome apparently took it seriously. Napoleon would be mad with rage. Pichon saw himself deprived of his position and driven into exile. He implored Jerome to go home. Jerome refused. Pichon cut off supplies. Jerome gaily borrowed from his new father-in-law. Then came the news that Napoleon had proclaimed himself Emperor of the French. Madame Jerome Bonaparte naturally wanted to go to France as soon as possible and enjoy her rank as an Imperial Princess. Jerome had doubts on the subject, but at last, when his funds ran low, he set out in one of Mr. Patterson’s ships for Lisbon with his wife. At Lisbon what Jerome had feared came about. The French consul, acting on instructions from Paris, announced that he could give only Jerome a passport; he could not give “Miss Patterson” one. At first Jerome swore he would stay by his wife, but Napoleon’s emissaries made him tempting offers. If he abandoned Miss Patterson he would be made an Imperial Prince; he would have high command; he would receive at least 150,000 francs a year. Jerome succumbed. He told his wife to travel round by sea to Amsterdam, whence she could more easily reach Paris to join him. He himself went direct. Naturally by Napoleon’s orders Elizabeth was denied permission to land at Amsterdam; she at last realized what Jerome had done, and, as she could do nothing else, she went to England, where she was cordially received. A child was born to her while she was in lodgings at Camberwell, and this son’s son was in 1906 Attorney-General of the United States. But Elizabeth was never recognized by the French Government as Jerome’s wife, and eventually she went back to the United States. There is a story that many years after she encountered Jerome and his next wife, Catherine of Würtemberg, in a picture gallery at Florence. Jerome was a perfect gentleman, and passed her by after telling Catherine who she was.

Be that as it may, Jerome gained many solid advantages from his desertion of his wife. His debts were paid and a large income was allowed him. He was entrusted with the command of a small naval expedition against Algiers, and on his return to Genoa with a few score French prisoners whom he had released he was greeted with storms of salutes and congratulatory addresses. From the tone of the announcements one would gather that he had anticipated Lord Exmouth’s feat in 1816, bombarded the city and wrung submission from the Dey by daring and courage. As a matter of fact the prisoners had been ransomed before he even started for a few pounds each by a French representative sent specially over.

It was much the same with the West Indian expedition which followed. Jerome certainly did considerable damage to English commerce, and somehow escaped the English cruisers, but the official description of his exploits seemed to indicate that he had almost subverted the British Empire.

No sooner was Jerome back in France than he turned soldier. On his early naval expeditions he had strutted about the deck in a Hussar uniform of which he was very fond, but apparently he did not see fit to appear before his troops in naval attire by way of returning the compliment. Napoleon was already planning to give Jerome a German kingdom, and he therefore decided that the young man should gain some military experience along with as much military glory as possible. With Vandamme as his adviser and a strong corps d’armée at his back, Jerome plunged into Silesia. The Prussians were stunned by the defeats of Jena and Auerstädt, and by the relentless pursuit which had followed, and they gave way before him with hardly a blow struck. One or two fortresses showed signs of resistance, and were blockaded. The remainder of the province was soon in Jerome’s hands, and he and Vandamme and the divisional commanders promptly enriched themselves with plunder. Once more Jerome’s achievements were blazoned abroad as feats of marvellous skill. Napoleon was usually successful in obtaining the gold of devotion in return for the tinsel of propaganda, and now he was exerting all his arts in his brother’s favour.

Napoleon’s victory of Friedland was followed by the Treaty of Tilsit, and one of the clauses therein gave Westphalia to Jerome. At the mature age of twenty-three the young man found himself ruler of two millions of subjects. Moreover, he was given a royal bride. The King of Würtemberg, it is true, had not been a king for more than two years, but the house of Wittelsbach could trace its ancestry back to the time of Charlemagne. Catherine of Würtemberg was already affianced, but at the Emperor’s command the engagement was broken off and Catherine was given to Jerome. Jerome’s American marriage was declared null and void, first by Napoleon because at the time Jerome was a minor, and secondly by the Metropolitan of Paris, for no particular reason. The fact that the ceremony had been performed by a Roman Catholic archbishop with all due regard to the forms of the Church, did not count.

However, the splendours of the new marriage were such that the old one might well be forgotten. It took place in the gallery of Diana at the Tuileries, and was attended by all the shining lights of the Empire. There was a goodly assembly of Kings, and there were Princes and Grand Dukes in dozens. Everybody seemed to have made a special effort to wear as much jewellery as possible, and the display of diamond-sewn dresses and yard-long ropes of pearls was remembered for years afterwards. The Democratic Empire had certainly made great strides.

Once married, Jerome departed with his Queen to his kingdom of Westphalia. The new state was a curious mixture of fragments of other countries. Hesse, Hanover, Brunswick and Prussia had all contributed to it (unwillingly), and Calvinists and Catholics were represented in about equal numbers and with an equal aversion each from the other. The whole country was ruined by prolonged military occupation; it was loaded with debt, for Napoleon blithely began to collect money owing to the Elector of Hesse whom he had dispossessed; nearly one-fourth of the whole area was claimed by the Emperor to be distributed as endowments to his officers; a huge army had to be maintained, and a French army of occupation had to be paid and supplied; a war contribution had to be paid to the French treasury; and to crown it all the Continental system was slowly crushing the life out of the industries. During the first administrative year there was a deficit of five million francs, and this was the smallest there was during the whole lifetime of the country. From then onwards the financial measures proceeded on the well-worn way to ruin, the landmarks thereon being forced loans, repudiation of debt, and taxes amounting to one-half the total national income. There is nothing remarkable in the fact that the six years of the existence of the kingdom were marked by two serious mutinies and three distinct rebellions.

Jerome himself was quite indifferent to the troubles of his people. He spent enormous amounts on his palace at Cassel, and in addition he fell heavily into personal debt despite a Civil List of five million francs a year. His pleasures were, to say the least, of a dubious sort, and we find hints everywhere that the orgies at Cassel eclipsed even those at the Parc-aux-Cerfs in the good old days of the Bourbon régime. Catherine apparently made no violent objection to this behaviour of her husband’s; the graceless young scamp seems to have completely bewitched her. He must have had the time of his life during these years, despite occasional shocks like the one he experienced when he read in the Moniteur (the first indication he received) that one quarter of his kingdom had been annexed to France.

Only once did Jerome appear on active service during this period, and that was to command thirty or forty thousand men during the Russian campaign of 1812. He travelled with all the luxuries he could think of, equerries, cooks, valets, barbers, mistresses, until his headquarters appeared like a small town. But the hardships of war did not last long; Jerome was found wanting in military ability. His failure to keep up to the difficult time-table Napoleon set him during the advance into Lithuania led to his being placed under Davout’s command. Neither he nor Davout liked the arrangement, and Jerome threw up his command and went back to Cassel.

Here he enjoyed himself for one more year. Even he had flinched from reviving the old droit du seigneur, but he did his best in that direction without that amount of ceremony. But the sands were running out as the French armies fell back from the Niemen to the Oder, from the Oder to the Elbe, and at last the battle of Leipzig laid open all the country between the Elbe and the Rhine to the triumphant Allies. The Kingdom of Westphalia vanished in a night, like a dream; the Westphalian army went over to the Allies en bloc, and Jerome returned to France with barely two hundred men at his back.

The Hundred Days gave Jerome one last chance of displaying his manhood, and, curiously enough, he made the most of it. He was given command of a division of Reille’s corps in the Waterloo campaign, and he led it with unexpected dash and vigour. He fought heroically at Quatre Bras, exposing himself recklessly in the dreadful fighting in the wood. At Waterloo he headed the attack on Hougomont, leading assault after assault with unflinching bravery. He was wounded, but remained in action, and at the close of the day he was seen striving to rally his men when they broke panic-stricken before the allied advance.

Waterloo almost atones in the general estimation for Jerome’s long and useless life. After the second Restoration he drifted idly about Europe, accompanied by his devoted Catherine; when the Orleans monarchy fell he hastened back to France. Along with Louis Napoleon he planned the coup d’état, and for the rest of his life, until 1860, he was once more a prominent subject of the French Empire. Napoleon III. made him a Marshal; his son married a princess of the house of Savoy, and he died comfortably in bed at the age of seventy-six. He never met with any fatal retribution for his callous desertion of Elizabeth Patterson, or for the wild debauchery of his youth. There seems to be no moral to attach to the tale of his career.

Of the remaining descendants in the male line of the house of Bonaparte there is little to tell. One of them, Lucien, a grandson of Lucien, Napoleon’s brother, rose to the eminence of Cardinal; one or two of them have shown ability in various branches of science; the curious tendency to literature has repeatedly cropped out; but none of them has ever achieved anything really striking. Their novels are more feeble even than Garibaldi’s, while their political achievements are of course beneath comparison. Some of them have fought duels, and some of them have committed manslaughter. Some of them have even attained the dazzling heights of the French chamber of deputies. But there is not one of them who would receive two lines of notice in any fair-sized book of reference were it not for his relationship to the great Napoleon. The present head of the house is Napoleon Victor Jerome, who married in 1910 a Coburg princess, a member of the royal family of Belgium. He is Napoleon VI., if the principle of legitimacy can yet be applied to the house of Bonaparte; anyway, he shows not the least desire to become Napoleon VI.

Had Napoleon had no brothers, he would probably have been more successful; had he had any brothers of equal ability they would have pulled each other down in Europe, if they had not cut each other’s throats years before in Corsica; as it is, he stands as unique in his family as he does in his age.

JOSEPH NAPOLEON ROI DE NAPLES et de SICILE
ET ROI D’ESPAGNE ET DES INDES
Né le 7 janvier 1768. Sacré et couronné le
3e Mars 1806.

CHAPTER XI
SISTERS

IF Napoleon’s brothers were all a generally hopeless lot, the same can by no means be said of his sisters. These stood out head and shoulders above the other women of the time; they were all distinguished by their force of character; whether they were married to nonentities or personalities they all did their best to wear the breeches—but they did not flinch from wearing nothing at all if the whim took them. They were all handsome women, and one of them, Pauline, was generally considered to be the most beautiful woman of the time.

Napoleon’s sisters resembled him much more closely than did his brothers. Xerxes, watching Artemisia fighting desperately at Salamis, exclaimed, “This woman plays the man while my men play the woman,” and a dispassionate observer of the conduct of the rulers of the countries of Europe in the Napoleonic era might well say the same. One has only to compare Joseph Bonaparte flying from Vittoria, or Murat flying from Tolentino, with Caroline rallying the Neapolitans, Louise of Prussia fighting desperately hard against fate at Tilsit, and Marie Caroline of Bourbon directing Sicily’s struggle with the great conqueror.

There are obvious differences, too, between Napoleon’s treatment of his brothers and his treatment of his sisters. Joseph and Jerome and Louis he bullied unmercifully, but it was far otherwise with Pauline, Caroline and Elise. He himself admitted that he always “formed into line of battle” in preparation for an interview with Caroline, and although authorities are at variance as to when he actually said to his family that anyone would think he was trying to rob them of the inheritance of the late King, their father, it is certain that the remark was addressed to his sisters and mother. They were all of them women with a very keen sense of what they wanted, and they fought like tiger-cats to obtain it.

The three girls all married before or during the Consulate, when Napoleon had not yet attained the heights he reached later, so that the marriages they made were by no means as brilliant as they might have been, and fell far short of the marriages which Napoleon arranged for much more distant relatives who became marriageable at a later period. Elise was old enough to experience acutely the trials of poverty which overtook the family before Napoleon was promoted to important commands. She was sent as a child to school at St. Cyr, a state-supported institution under the patronage of the Bourbons, and had to leave there at the same time as the Bonaparte family had to fly from Corsica to Marseilles. During the next few years she was rather a trial to her family, for she flirted with every man she met, eligible and ineligible. One of her admirers was Admiral Truguet, who was a thoroughly good sailor and quite a good match at that time, but Madame Bonaparte declined to allow the affair to develop. In the end it was a fellow Corsican, Félix Baciocchi, who gained her hand. Baciocchi was a distant connection of the Bonaparte family, and also, by a curious coincidence, he was a relation of Charles Andrea Pozzo di Borgo, another Corsican, who is believed to have been at feud with the Bonapartes, and who certainly distinguished himself, while in the service of various European monarchs, by his virulent hatred of Napoleon.

But Baciocchi did not distinguish himself at all. He was a complete nonentity, with neither the desire nor the capacity to achieve power. At the marriage Elise only brought him thirty thousand francs as dowry (her share of the Bonaparte property, now recovered from the Paolists), but after 1797 Napoleon was able to make Elise presents of considerably greater value. Baciocchi was then a major of infantry; but during the Consulate his wife endeavoured to obtain higher military command for him. So persistently did she scheme to this end that at last in self-defence Napoleon made him a senator in order to cut short his military career.

Pauline, the next sister, married Leclerc, a capable soldier, who rendered Napoleon valuable service during the coup d’état of Brumaire. He, at least, was worthy of promotion, and Bonaparte gave it to him lavishly. But it was Caroline, the youngest, who looked after herself best. Most of the generals of the Consulate sought her hand, including Lannes, but both Napoleon and Caroline desired alliance with the greatest of them all, Moreau. However, Moreau declined the honour (thereby directly bringing about his own exile soon after), and Caroline chose for herself a husband of whose military talents she was sufficiently sure to be certain that high command would be given him, but who also was sufficiently weak-willed to be well under her thumb. Lannes was of too lofty a type to please her in this respect, and his personal devotion to Napoleon was undoubted; Caroline therefore selected a young cavalry officer, Murat.

Pauline experienced an unfortunate beginning to the career she had planned for herself and her husband. Leclerc was appointed to the command of the expeditionary force which was sent to subdue Hayti, and Pauline was ordered to accompany him. In vain she pleaded ill-health; in vain she said that her complexion would be ruined by the West Indian sun; Napoleon was adamant. Pauline kept up the plea of ill-health sufficiently well to be carried on board ship at Brest in a litter, but the expedition started. As was only to be expected, it ended in disastrous failure. Toussaint l’Ouverture, the leader of the rebellion, was indeed captured and sent to France to perish in a freezing mountain prison, but yellow fever attacked the French troops, and they died in thousands. Leclerc was one of those who perished.

Napoleon himself was able to gain some satisfaction even from the failure, because the men he had sent had all been drawn from the Army of the Rhine, and they were all guilty of the crime of believing that Moreau was a great man, and that Hohenlinden was a greater victory than Marengo. But, as has been said, the French died in thousands; the negroes fought stoutly, and at last after fifteen thousand Frenchmen had perished only a miserable fragment of the expeditionary force survived to be withdrawn under Rochambeau. Pauline returned to France to deplore her ruined complexion.

However, with the establishment of the Empire the sisters found plenty to occupy their minds in acquiring as much spoil as possible. Money they sought greedily, and Napoleon gave them millions of francs. They shed tears of rage when they found that the Emperor expected them to remain content with being plain Mesdames Murat, Leclerc and Baciocchi, while the hated Josephine was Sa Majesté Impériale et Royale l’Impératrice et Reine, and while plain Julie Clary and Hortense Beauharnais (Joseph’s and Louis’s wives) were Imperial and Royal Highnesses. Napoleon gave way to their bitter pleadings and at one stroke created them Princesses of the Empire, making their husbands Princes at the same time.

These names, Elise, Pauline and Caroline, were not the baptismal names of the ladies concerned. At baptism they had been given Italian names, each of them attached to the ever popular name of Maria. Their mother was Maria Letizia; while Elise was really Maria Anna, Pauline, Maria Paoletta and Caroline, Maria Annunziata. It is by these names that they are described on their marriage certificates, but they dropped them soon afterwards to assume names which appealed to them more. Changing their names did not change their natures; they intrigued and schemed and plotted; they flirted; they sought favours; they quarrelled with their husbands, with their sisters-in-law, and with each other; in fact they exhibited all the fierce self-seeking which characterized the ladies of the old monarchy. There was this difference, however. Fifty years before the Court ladies had intrigued for places, and for thousands of francs. Now they intrigued for kingdoms and millions.

Caroline early took first place in the race for power. Her husband, Murat, distinguished himself in the Austerlitz campaign by capturing the great bridge over the Danube by a trick which savoured rather of treachery, and by bold heading of cavalry charges at Austerlitz itself. He was already a Prince and second senior Marshal of the Empire; the only possible promotion left for him was a sovereignty. Napoleon, carving out his Confederation of the Rhine, found him one. A tiny area on the Rhine was obtained by exchange from Prussia and Bavaria, and Murat and Caroline became Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Berg and Cleves. Caroline was in no way satisfied. She egged her husband on to demand increases of territory, privileges of toll on the Rhine, and so on, until the little state had set both France and Prussia in a ferment. The tension hardly relaxed until, a month or two later, war broke out between the two countries. Murat went away with the Grand Army to Jena, Eylau and Friedland; Caroline stayed behind in Paris to guard their interests. She did it well. She indulged in an outrageous flirtation with Junot, Governor of Paris, and hints have not been wanting that her purpose was to arrange a revolution rather on the same lines as Mallet tried to follow in 1812. At her palace of the Elysée (now the official residence of the President of the Third Republic) she gave the most brilliant fêtes imaginable. She worked like a slave to gain popularity, so that she could gain the throne in the event of her brother’s death. Then Tilsit followed Friedland, and the Emperor returned. The campaign had brought more glory to Murat than he had as yet gained. He had headed the marvellous pursuit after Jena, when he had captured fortresses with a few regiments of Hussars, and it was largely through him that practically the whole Prussian army had fallen into the hands of the French. At Eylau, when Augereau’s corps had come reeling back through the blizzard, shattered and almost annihilated, when it seemed as though the Grand Army was at last going to taste defeat, Napoleon had called on Murat to save the day. Murat replied by charging at the head of eighteen thousand cavalry. He broke up the first Russian line, captured thousands of prisoners, and beat back the Russians until Davout and Ney were in position.