The Tragedy of St. Helena Part 7

This lady received a pension during the Third Empire, and in eighteen years it mounted to over six million francs. She died in Brittany, 1869, and left her fortune to the Prince Imperial.

That there was a determined and well-conceived plot to carry the Duke off is undoubted, but the counter-plots prevailed against the more ardent Bonapartists who were thirsting for a resurrection of the glorious Empire. Prince Louis Napoleon, the eldest son of King Louis, disagreed with the idea of his family. He looked upon the Emperor's son as being an Austrian Prince, imbued with Austrian methods and policy, and therefore dangerous to the best interests of France. This Prince went so far as to hail with pleasure the crowning of Louis Philippe. He died in 1831. In the following year his Imperial cousin pa.s.sed on too, and his demise was a great blow to the Bonapartists'

cause, and it well-nigh killed the aged Madame Mere, who had centred all her hopes in him. Marie Louise announced his death, to his grandmother and asks her to "accept on this sorrowful occasion the a.s.surance of the kindly feeling entertained for her by her affectionate daughter," and here is the cold, dignified, crushing reply from Madame Mere. It is dictated, and dated Rome, August 6, 1832:--

"Madame, notwithstanding the political shortsightedness which has constantly deprived me of all news of the dear child whose death you have been so considerate to announce to me, I have never ceased to entertain towards him the devotion of a mother.

In him I still found an object of some consolation, but to my great age, and to my incessant and painful infirmities, G.o.d has seen fit to add this blow as fresh proof of His mercy, since I firmly believe that He will amply atone to him in His glory for the glory of this world.

"Accept my thanks, madame, for having put yourself to this trouble in such sorrowful circ.u.mstances to alleviate the bitterness of my grief. Be sure that it will remain with me all my life. My condition precludes me from even signing this letter, and I must therefore crave your permission to delegate the task to my brother."

Never a word about the lady's relationship to her son or to herself.

Her reply is studiously formal, but every expression of it betokens grief and thoughts of the great martyr whom the woman she was writing to had wronged. There is not a syllable of _open_ reproach, though there runs through it a polite, withering indictment that must a.s.suredly have cut deeply into the callous nature of this notorious Austrian Archd.u.c.h.ess who had played her son so falsely.

This wonderful mother of a wonderful family seems to have been the least suspected of political plotting of all the Bonapartists. She was respected by all, and revered and beloved by many. Crowned heads were not indifferent to her strength and n.o.bility of character, but the stupid old King who succeeded her son to the throne of France got it into his head that she was harbouring agents in Corsica to excite rebellion, and he thereupon had a complaint lodged against her. Pius VII., who knew Madame Mere, sent his secretary to see her about this supposed intrigue. She listened to what the representative of the Pope had to say, and then with stern dignity began her reply:--

"Monseigneur, I do not possess the millions with which they credit me, but let M. de Blacas tell his master Louis XVIII. that if I did, I should not employ them to foment troubles in Corsica, or to gain adherents for my son in France, since he already has enough; I should use them to fit out a fleet to liberate him from St. Helena, where the most infamous perfidy is holding him captive."

Then she bowed reverently and left the room.

This was indeed a slashing rebuff both to Pius VII. and the "Most Christian King."

Another very good story is told of this extraordinary old lady by H.

Noel Williams. It appears she persisted after the fall of the Empire in using the Imperial arms on her carriage.

"Why should I discontinue this symbol?" she asked. "Europe bowed to the dust before my son's arms for ten years, and her sovereigns have not forgotten it."

On one occasion she was out driving when a block occurred. Two Austrian officers, who were riding past, boldly looked into the carriage. Madame Mere, observing the Austrian uniform, to which she had an aversion, was excited to indignation, so letting down the window she exclaimed to them, "What, gentlemen, is your pleasure? If it is to see the mother of the Emperor Napoleon, here she is!" The officers were naturally crestfallen. They respectfully saluted and rode off. These stinging shots of hers were quite disturbing; they always went home, and reached too far for the comfort of her son's persecutors.

Her letter to the allied sovereigns who met at Aix-la-Chapelle is one of the most trenchant indictments that has ever been penned. Its logic, its brave, though courteous, appeal for justice and magnanimity, and above all the echo of motherly love which characterises it, stamp it as a doc.u.ment worth cherishing. The last paragraph will fascinate the imagination of generations yet to come, and heavy judgment will be laid on those that were committing the crime.

"Reasons of State," she says, "have their limits, and _posterity_, which _forgets nothing_, admires above everything the generosity of conquerors."

The allied sovereigns were afraid to answer the letter. Better for their reputations if they had obviated the necessity of writing it.

The testimony of Pius VII. is that she was "a G.o.d-fearing woman who deserved to be honoured by every prince in Christendom."

A great joy came to Madame Mere in 1830, when they told her that the Government had decided to replace the statue of Napoleon on the Vendome Column. She went into ecstasies over this, but bewailed her lameness (she had broken her thigh that year) and total blindness, which would forever prevent her beholding the statue. She turned away from these painful reflections and comforted herself with a few words of sad humour, remarking that if she could have been in Paris as in former days, G.o.d would have given her strength to climb to the top of the column to a.s.sure herself that it was there. She refused to separate her lot from that of her children, and would not accept the proposal that the sentence of banishment should be repealed unless it included all her family. This remarkable woman died February 2, 1836, aged eighty-five, and Napoleon III. had the remains of his grandmother and Cardinal Fesch removed to Ajaccio in 1851. Six years later the remains were again removed and deposited in a vault constructed to receive them in a church which was built subsequent to the first interment at Ajaccio.

Pity and strange it is that the Emperor's faithless second wife should be noticed at all in history. Happily, very few even of those historians who are anti-Napoleon have anything very complimentary to say of her. She survived her son the King of Rome fifteen years, and the earth claimed her in December, 1847, her age being fifty-six. Had this amiable adulteress, who wished success to the allied armies against her husband, lived a little longer, she would have witnessed the humiliating spectacle of her father's successor being forced to abdicate his throne in favour of the nephew of her Imperial husband, whose memory all n.o.ble hearts revere, and whose sufferings, domestic and public, will ever lie at the door of this woman who allowed herself to be the base accomplice of a great a.s.sa.s.sination. The most fitting reference to her death appeared in the _Times_ newspaper, which said that "nothing in her life became her like the leaving it."

On April 15, 1821, in the third paragraph of his will, Napoleon, with consistent magnanimity, if not wilful indifference to this pa.s.sive, icy female's abandonment of him, says: "I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest Marie Louise. I retain for her, to my last moment, the most tender sentiments. I beseech her to watch, in order to preserve my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy."

What irony!

It is quite a reasonable proposition to suppose that Napoleon must have had a secret suspicion of his wife's infidelity. It is even hard to believe that he had not a full knowledge of her actual a.s.sociation with Count Neipperg. It will be observed that while his reference to her is dutiful, not to say tender, there is still something lacking, as though he kept something snugly in the back of his head, something like the following:--"I cannot make this historical doc.u.ment without alluding to you for my son's sake, though I know full well you have wronged me and consorted with my enemies and betrayers. I know all this, but I am about to pa.s.s on, and true to my instincts of compa.s.sion and to my Imperial dignity, I must carry my sorrow and grief with me, and having given you as good a testimonial as I can, I must leave you to settle accounts with posterity as to your conduct towards me and your adopted country. I shall not do by you as you have done. I hope full allowance will be made for all you have made me suffer. Meanwhile, I am about to relieve the digestion of Kings by pa.s.sing to the Elysian Fields, there to be greeted by Kleber, Desaix, Bessieres, Duroc, Ney, Murat, Ma.s.sena, and Berthier, and we shall talk of the deeds we have done together. Yes, Marie Louise, I bend under the terrible yoke your father, his Chancellor, and the allied satellites have made for me, and yet I keep these incomparable warriors of Europe in a state of alarm. I wish you joy of your allies, who have behaved so n.o.bly to your husband in captivity. I have often thought in my solitude, Louise, that it would have been a more popular national union had I carried out my intention of taking for my second wife a Frenchwoman. It may be that my marriage with you, consummated by every token of peace and goodwill, was really the beginning of my downfall. Ah! how much more n.o.ble of you to have followed me in my adversity to Elba. You might have done great service to France and to your native land, to say nothing of the possibility of breaking up the coalition against me and saving rivers of blood. Waterloo might never have been fought had you emulated your matchless sister-in-law, Catherine of Westphalia, in her att.i.tude of supreme womanhood, and your fame might have surpa.s.sed that of Joan of Arc, and been handed down to distant ages as an example of heroic firmness and devotion, and then you would have been beatified by the Church and acclaimed a saint by the people to which you belong. You shared with me the unequalled grandeur of the most powerful throne on earth. I was devoted to you and you betrayed me. Your father insisted that you should break your marriage vow and found in you a willing accomplice in the outrage committed against me. You had shared my throne, and I had reason to expect that every human instinct would call you to my side in my exile, and the thought that burns into my soul is that in the infamy of years, posterity will not be reproached for averting its eye from you as well as from that heartless father who requested you to forsake me. Catherine of Westphalia did better. She defied her father, and clung more closely to her husband when he needed all the succour of a sympathetic being to comfort him in his hour of dire misfortune. These gloomy thoughts are forced upon me by every law of nature, and now that I have but a brief time left, I am impelled to bequeath to you in the third paragraph of my last will and testament some tender remembrance of you. I do this notwithstanding that you, Marie Louise, Empress of the French, prayed to G.o.d that He would bless the arms of the enemies of the land of your adoption. And then that letter which I sent you from Gren.o.ble in a nutsh.e.l.l on my way from Elba to Paris to reclaim the throne which treason had deprived me of.

I requested you to come to me with my son the King of Rome. You ignored that, as you did other communications which I sent, and which I am a.s.sured you received. I make no public accusation against you.

_That_ would be undignified and unkingly."

In spite of his apparent unaltered affection for his wife, Napoleon reflectively made occasional remarks during his exile which indicated that her conduct was much in his mind; and the foregoing portrayal of his sentiments towards her may be regarded as a human probability. The remarkable thing is that he should have made any reference at all to this erotic woman in his will. It puzzled his companions in exile, who knew well enough that she was the cause of much mental anguish to him.

It afflicted him so keenly on two notable occasions that he drew pathetically a comparison between her conduct and that which would have been Josephine's under similar circ.u.mstances. It is an astonishing characteristic in Napoleon that he always forgave those who had injured him most.

In order to emphasise the spirit of forgiveness, he specially refers to a matter that must have taken a lot of forgiving. In the sixth paragraph of his will he says: "The two unfortunate results of the invasions of France, when she had still so many resources, are to be attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and La Fayette. I forgive them--may the posterity of France forgive them as I do." Then in the seventh paragraph he pardons his brother Louis for the libel he published in 1820, although, as he states, "It is replete with false a.s.sertions and falsified doc.u.ments." He heaps coals of fire on Marie Louise by requesting Marchand to preserve some of his hair and to cause a bracelet to be made of it with a little gold clasp. It is highly probable that the wife of Count Neipperg would rather not have been reminded of her amorous habits and other culpable conduct by these little attentions.

Neipperg, this foul and willing instrument of seduction, whose baseness insults every moral law, suffered great agony for three years from an incurable disease, and died in December, 1828, aged fifty-seven years. The Kings and regicides in their ferocious fear had made it an important part of their policy that Marie Louise should be the pivot on which the complete ruin of Napoleon should centre, so Neipperg was fixed upon as a fit and proper person to mould the ex-Empress into pa.s.sive obedience to the wishes of her husband's inveterate enemies. Meneval notes that this man had already amours to his credit. He had indeed run away with another man's wife, and had issue by her. Probably his amorous reputation influenced the oligarchy in their choice.

In order that the plan might be carried out, he adroitly improvised falsehood, poured into her ears stories of faithlessness on the part of her Imperial husband, read books and pamphlets manufactured and exactly suited for the purpose he had in view. His instructions were to carry things as far he could get them to go, and he did this with revolting success.

G.o.d's broad earth has not known a more ugly incident than that of carrying personal hatred and political cowardice to such a pitch of delirium as that of forcing a weak woman to forsake her husband, sacrifice the interests of her child, and tempt her to break her marriage vow in order that her husband's ruin might be more completely a.s.sured. As a matter of high policy its wickedness will never be excelled.

At the death of her morganatic husband Marie Louise became "inconsolable." She gave orders for a "costly mausoleum to be put up so that her grief might be durably established." In reply to a letter of condolence written to her by the eminent Italian, Dr. Aglietti, in which he seems to have made some courteous and consoling observations, she says "that all the efforts of art were powerless, for it is impossible to fight against the _Divine Will_. You are very right in saying that time and religion can alone diminish the bitterness of such a loss. Alas! the former, far from exercising its power over me, only daily increases my grief." This "amiable," grief-stricken royal sham, overcharged with expressions of religious fervour, succ.u.mbs again to her natural instincts. "Time," she avers, "cannot console,"

but only increases the depth of her grief for "our dear departed."

Her sentiments would be consummately impressive were it not that we know how wholly deceitful she was without in the least knowing it. But the creeping horror of time is quickly softened by her marriage in 1833 to a Frenchman called De Bombelles, who was in the service of her native land, and is said to have had English blood in his veins. In spite of the loyal effort of Meneval to make her ironic procession through life appear as favourable as he can, the only true impression that can be arrived at is that she was without shame, self-control, or pity.

A strange sympathiser of Napoleon in his dire distress was a daughter of Maria Theresa and a sister of Marie Antoinette--Queen Marie Caroline, grandmother to Marie Louise. She had regarded the Emperor of the French with peculiar aversion, but when his power was broken and he became the victim of persecution, this good woman forgot her prejudices, sent for Meneval, and said to him that she had had cause to regard Napoleon at one time as an enemy, but now that he was in trouble she forgot the past. She declared that if it was still the determination of the Court of Vienna to sever the bonds of unity between man and wife in order that the Emperor might be deprived of consolation, it was her granddaughter's duty to a.s.sume disguise, tie sheets together, lower herself from the window, and bolt.

There is little doubt the dexterous and spirited old lady gave Louise sound advice, and had she acted under her holy influence, her name would have become a monument of n.o.blemindedness, a lesson, in fact, against striking a vicious, cowardly blow at the unfortunate. It is moreover highly probable that Queen Caroline felt, at the time, that the political marriage of her granddaughter to the French Emperor was ill-a.s.sorted and tragic, but the deed having been done, she upheld the divine law of marriage. Besides, she knew that Napoleon had been an indulgent, kind husband to the uneven-minded girl, and that, whatever his faults may have been, it was her duty to comfort him and share in his sorrow as she had so amply shared in his glory. Hence she urges a reunion with the exile, but the ex-Empress may have made it impossible ere this to enjoy the consoling sweets of conjugal companionship, and her subsequent conduct makes it more than likely that she was too deeply compromised to abandon the vortex and face the penalty of the errors she had committed.

"I could listen," says Napoleon, "to the intelligence of the death of my wife, my son, or of all my family, without a change of feature--not the slightest emotion or alteration of countenance would be visible.

But when alone in my chamber, _then_ I suffer. Then the feelings of the man burst forth."

We are not accustomed to think of this strong personality as being overcome with soft emotions. We have regarded him as the personification of strength, and yet with all his gigantic power over men and himself, he had a real womanly supply of human tenderness.

Once he was seen weeping before the portrait of his much beloved son, whom he called "Mon pauvre pet.i.t chou." "I do not blush to admit,"

said he on a memorable occasion, "that I have a good deal of a mother's tenderness. I could never count on the faithfulness of a father who did not love his children."

FOOTNOTES:

[18] "Correspondance de Napoleon," vol. 128, p. 133.

[19] Quoted from De Wertheimer's "Duke of Reichstadt," p. 330.

[20] See "Memoirs."

[21] See "Memoirs."

CHAPTER IV

THE OLIGARCHY, THEIR AGENTS AND APOLOGISTS

It would be an easy task to enlarge on the excellent qualities of this wonderful man. Volumes could be written about this phase of his dazzling career alone, and yet we have miscreants such as Talleyrand proclaiming to the Conference of "Christian Kings" and traitors that the greatest, most powerful, and most humane prince of the age "must be exterminated like a mad dog." The news of his flight from Elba and arrival in Paris, vociferously acclaimed by the French people as their lawful sovereign, threw this band of parasites into apoplectic terror; Talleyrand, of all creatures, dictating to the Conference as to the wording of the proclamation that should be issued outlawing his Emperor, whom he and they styled "Usurper." If it were not so outrageous a violation of decency, we would look upon it as the most comical incident notified in history. Talleyrand, the most accomplished traitor and barefaced thief in Europe, except perhaps Bourrienne, he who could not prevent himself from fumbling in his sovereign's and everybody else's pockets whenever the opportunity occurred, to be allowed to sit in conference with the anointed rulers of Europe is really too comic.

Napoleon was styled "Usurper" by these saintly Legitimists, not one of whom attained kingship so honourably and legitimately as the man whom they had sworn to destroy, even though the whole of Europe were to be drenched in blood by the process of it. They set themselves to disfranchise and usurp the rights of the French people, who had only just again ratified by millions of votes his claim to the throne, and the gallant and heroic response to their requisition that he should leave Elba and become their ruler again. Surely it will never be contended that Napoleon's claims were less legitimate than those of the Prince of Orange, or the Elector of Hanover, or Frederic William the great Elector, whose sole qualification for kingship consisted in having the instincts of a tiger. Of the latter Lord Macaulay says, "His palace was h.e.l.l, and he the most execrable of fiends." His sole ambition seemed to be to pay fabulous sums for giant soldiers, and he showed an inhuman aversion to his son, afterwards known as Frederic the Great, and his daughter Wilhelmina. He was as ignorant and ill-conditioned a creature as could be found in the whole world, a cowardly rascal who found pleasure in kicking ladies whom he might meet in the street and ordering them "home to mind their brats." No more need be said of the father of the great Frederic, whose "Life"

took Thomas Carlyle thirteen years in searching musty German histories to produce. Carlyle says, "One of the reasons that led me to write 'Frederic' was that he managed not to be a liar and charlatan as his century was"; and indeed his adoration for Frederic is quite pardonable. He had spent thirteen years of his life in the supreme effort of making him a hero, and his great work, contained in eight volumes, is a matchless piece of literature; but there is nothing in it to justify anyone believing that Frederic was neither a liar nor a charlatan. It is true Frederic finished better than he began, but truthfulness and honesty were not conspicuous virtues of his. He lied, broke faith, and plundered wherever and whenever it suited his purpose, and some of his other vices were unspeakable. There is no doubt he was both a quack and a coward when he broke the Pragmatic Sanction and began to steal the territory of Maria Theresa. The powers of England, France, Spain, Russia, Poland, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, the Germanic body, all had agreed by treaty to keep it. Had he been an honourable man and possessed of the qualities Carlyle credits him with, he would have stood by his oath. Instead of defending his ally, he pounced upon her like a vulture, and plunged Europe into a devastating, b.l.o.o.d.y war, with the sole object of robbery; and all he could say for himself in extenuation of such base conduct was: "Ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk about me, carried the day; and I decided for war."

Truly Frederic was not a good man, and his reputation for being great was mainly acquired because the Powers and circ.u.mstances allowed him to succeed after seven long years of sanguinary conflict.

Indeed, there was not a single act in the whole of Napoleon's career that approaches the lawlessness and cruelty of Frederic. He really usurped nothing, and Frederic usurped everything that he could put his hands on, regardless of every moral law; but then he ignored all moral laws. There is no need for comparison, but it is just as well to point out that the plea of legitimacy is very shallow, and the contention of the Allies is an amazing burlesque emanating from the brains of an industrious mediocrity.