Napoleon's Letters To Josephine Part 71

No. 19.

_I await events._--A phrase usually attributed to Talleyrand in 1815. However, the Treaty of Presburg was soon signed (December 2nd), and the same day Napoleon met the Archduke Charles at Stamersdorf, a meeting arranged from mutual esteem. Napoleon had an unswerving admiration for this past and future foe, and said to Madame d'Abrantes, "That man has a soul, a golden heart."[59]

Napoleon, however, did not wish to discuss politics, and only arranged for an interview of two hours, "one of which," he wrote Talleyrand, "will be employed in dining, the other in talking war and in mutual protestations."

_I, for my part, am sufficiently busy._--No part of Napoleon's career is more wonderful than the way in which he conducts the affairs of France and of Europe from a hostile capital. This was his first experience of the kind, and perhaps the easiest, although Prussian diplomacy had needed very delicate and astute handling. But when Napoleon determined, without even consulting his wife, to cement political alliances by matrimonial ones with his and her relatives, he was treading on somewhat new and difficult ground. First and foremost, he wanted a princess for his ideal young man, Josephine's son Eugene, and he preferred Auguste, the daughter of the King of Bavaria, to the offered Austrian Archd.u.c.h.ess. But the young Hereditary Prince of Baden was in love and accepted by his beautiful cousin Auguste; so, to compensate him for his loss, the handsome and vivacious Stephanie Beauharnais, fresh from Madame Campan's finishing touches, was sent for. For his brother Jerome a bride is found by Napoleon in the daughter of the King of Wurtemberg. Baden, Bavaria, and Wurtemberg were too much indebted to France for the spoils they were getting from Austria to object, provided the ladies and their mammas were agreeable; but the conqueror of Austerlitz found this part the most difficult, and had to be so attentive to the Queen of Bavaria that Josephine was jealous. However, all the matches came off, and still more remarkable, all turned out happily, a fact which certainly redounds to Napoleon's credit as a match-maker.

On December 31st, at 1.45 A.M., he entered Munich by torchlight and under a triumphal arch. His chamberlain, M. de Thiard, a.s.sured him that if he left Munich the marriage with Eugene would fall through, and he agrees to stay, although he declared that his absence, which accentuated the Bank crisis, is costing him 1,500,000 francs a day.

The marriage took place on January 14th, four days after Eugene arrived at Munich and three days after that young Bayard had been bereft of his cherished moustache. Henceforth the bridegroom is called "Mon fils" in Napoleon's correspondence, and in the contract of marriage Napoleon-Eugene de France. The Emperor and Empress reached the Tuileries on January 27th. The marriage of Stephanie was even more difficult to manage, for, as St. Amand points out, the Prince of Baden had for brothers-in-law the Emperor of Russia, the King of Sweden, and the King of Bavaria--two of whom at least were friends of England.

Josephine had once an uncle-in-law, the Count Beauharnais, whose wife f.a.n.n.y was a well-known literary character of the time, but of whom the poet Lebrun made the epigram--

"Elle fait son visage, et ne fait pas ses vers."

Stephanie was the grand-daughter of this couple, and as Grand-d.u.c.h.ess of Baden was beloved and respected, and lived on until 1860.

FOOTNOTES

[58] The first month of the Republican calendar.

[59] Memoirs, vol. ii. 165.

SERIES G

No. 1.

Napoleon left St. Cloud with Josephine on September 25th, and had reached Mayence on the 28th, where his Foot Guard were awaiting him.

He left Mayence on October 1st, and reached Wurzburg the next day, whence this letter was written, just before starting for Bamberg.

Josephine was installed in the Teutonic palace at Mayence.

_Princess of Baden_, Stephanie Beauharnais. (For her marriage, see note, end of Series F.)

_Hortense_ was by no means happy with her husband at the best of times, and she cordially hated Holland. She was said to be very frightened of Napoleon, but (like most people) could easily influence her mother. Napoleon's letter to her of this date (October 5th) is certainly not a severe one:--"I have received yours of September 14th.

I am sending to the Chief Justice in order to accord pardon to the individual in whom you are interested. Your news always gives me pleasure. I trust you will keep well, and never doubt my great friendship for you."

_The Grand Duke_, _i.e._ of Wurzburg. The castle where Napoleon was staying seemed to him sufficiently strong to be armed and provisioned, and he made a great depot in the city. "Volumes," says Meneval, "would not suffice to describe the mult.i.tude of his military and administrative measures here, and the precautions which he took against even the most improbable hazards of war."

_Florence._--Probably September 1796, when Napoleon was hard pressed, and Josephine had to fetch a compa.s.s from Verona to regain Milan, and thus evade Wurmser's troops.

No. 2.

_Bamberg._--Arriving at Bamberg on the 6th, Napoleon issued a proclamation to his army which concluded--"Let the Prussian army experience the same fate that it experienced fourteen years ago. Let it learn that, if it is easy to acquire increase of territory and power by means of the friendship of the great people, their enmity, which can be provoked only by the abandonment of all spirit of wisdom and sense, is more terrible than the tempests of the ocean."

_Eugene._--Napoleon wrote him on the 5th, and twice on the 7th, on which date we have _eighteen_ letters in the _Correspondence_.

_Her husband._--The Hereditary Grand Duke of Baden, to whom Napoleon had written from Mayence on September 30th, accepting his services, and fixing the rendezvous at Bamberg for October 4th or 5th.

On this day Napoleon invaded Prussian territory by entering Bayreuth, having preceded by one day the date of their ultimatum--a rhapsody of twenty pages, which Napoleon in his First Bulletin compares to "one of those which the English Cabinet pay their literary men 500 per annum to write." It is in this Bulletin where he describes the Queen of Prussia (dressed as an Amazon, in the uniform of her regiment of dragoons, and writing twenty letters a day) to be like Armida in her frenzy, setting fire to her own palace.

No. 3.

By this time the Prussian army is already in a tight corner, with its back on the Rhine, which, as Napoleon says in his Third Bulletin written on this day, is "_a.s.sez bizarre_, from which very important events should ensue." On the previous day he concludes a letter to Talleyrand--"One cannot conceive how the Duke of Brunswick, to whom one allows some talent, can direct the operations of this army in so ridiculous a manner."

_Erfurt._--Here endless discussions, but, as Napoleon says in his bulletin of this day--"Consternation is at Erfurt, ... but while they deliberate, the French army is marching.... Still the wishes of the King of Prussia have been executed; he wished that by October 8th the French army should have evacuated the territory of the Confederation which _has_ been evacuated, but in place of repa.s.sing the Rhine, it has pa.s.sed the Saal."

_If she wants to see a battle._--_Queen Louise_, great-grandmother of the present Emperor William, and in 1806 aged thirty. St. Amand says that "when she rode on horseback before her troops, with her helmet of polished steel, shaded by a plume, her gleaming golden cuira.s.s, her tunic of cloth of silver, her red buskins with golden spurs," she resembled, as the bulletin said, one of the heroines of Ta.s.so. She hated France, and especially Napoleon, as the child of the French Revolution.

No. 4.

_I nearly captured him and the Queen._--They escaped only by an hour, Napoleon writes Berthier. Blucher aided their escape by telling a French General about an imaginary armistice, which the latter was severely reprimanded by Napoleon for believing.

No battle was more beautifully worked out than the battle of Jena--Davoust performing specially well his move in the combinations by which the Prussian army was hopelessly entangled, as Mack at Ulm a year before. Bernadotte alone, and as usual, gave cause for dissatisfaction. He had a personal hatred for his chief, caused by the knowledge that his wife (Desiree Clary) had never ceased to regret that she had missed her opportunity of being the wife of Napoleon.

Bernadotte, therefore, was loth to give initial impetus to the victories of the French Emperor, though, when success was no longer doubtful, he would prove that it was not want of capacity but want of will that had kept him back. He was the Talleyrand of the camp, and had an equal apt.i.tude for fishing in troubled waters.

_I have bivouacked._--Whether the issue of a battle was decisive, or, as at Eylau, only partially so, Napoleon never shunned the disagreeable part of battle--the tending of the wounded and the burial of the dead. Savary tells us that at Jena, as at Austerlitz, the Emperor rode round the field of battle, alighting from his horse with a little brandy flask (constantly refilled), putting his hand to each unconscious soldier's breast, and when he found unexpected life, giving way to a joy "impossible to describe" (vol. ii. 184).

Meneval also speaks of his performing this "pious duty, in the fulfilment of which nothing was allowed to stand in his way."

No. 5.

_Fatigues, bivouacs ... have made me fat._--The Austerlitz campaign had the same effect. See a remarkable letter to Count Miot de Melito on January 30th, 1806: "The campaign I have just terminated, the movement, the excitement have made me stout. I believe that if all the kings of Europe were to coalesce against me I should have a ridiculous paunch." And it was so!

_The great M. Napoleon_, aged four, and the younger, aged two, are with Hortense and their grandmother at Mayence, where a Court had a.s.sembled, including most of the wives of Napoleon's generals, burning for news. A look-out had been placed by the Empress some two miles on the main-road beyond Mayence, whence sight of a courier was signalled in advance.

No. 7.

_Potsdam._--As a reward for Auerstadt, Napoleon orders Davoust and his famous Third Corps to be the first to enter Berlin the following day.

No. 8.

Written from Berlin, where he is from October 28th to November 25th.

_You do nothing but cry._--Josephine spent her evenings gauging futurity with a card-pack, and although it announced Jena and Auerstadt before the messenger, it may possibly, thinks M. Ma.s.son, have been less propitious for the future--and behind all was the sinister portion of the spae-wife's prophecy still unfulfilled.

No. 9A.

_Madame Tallien_ had been in her time, especially in the years 1795-99, one of the most beautiful and witty women in France. Madame d'Abrantes calls her the Venus of the Capitol; and Lucien Bonaparte speaks of the court of the voluptuous Director, Barras, where the beautiful Tallien was the veritable Calypso. The people, however, could not forget her second husband, Tallien, from whom she was divorced in 1802 (having had three children born while he was in Egypt, 1798-1802); and whilst they called Josephine "Notre Dame des Victoires," they called Madame Tallien "Notre Dame de Septembre."