Part 17
_Arras, August 29th._--Early on this day he had been at St. Cloud. On the 30th he writes Cambaceres from Arras that he is "satisfied with the spirit of this department." On the same day he writes thence to the King of Prussia and Fouche. To his Minister of Police he writes: "That detestable journal, _Le Citoyen francais_, seems only to wish to wallow in blood. For eight days running we have been entertained with nothing but the Saint Bartholomew. Who on earth is the editor (_redacteur_) of this paper? With what gusto this wretch relishes the crimes and misfortunes of our fathers! My intention is that you should put a stop to it. Have the editor (_directeur_) of this paper changed, or suppress it." On Friday he is at Mons (writing interesting letters respecting the removal of church ruins), and reaches his wife on the Sunday (September 2nd) as his letter foreshadowed.
_I am rather impatient to see you._--The past few months had been an anxious time for Josephine. Talleyrand (who, having insulted her in 1799, thought her his enemy) was scheming for her divorce, and wished Napoleon to marry the Princess Wilhelmina of Baden, and thus cement an alliance with Bavaria and Russia (Constant, vol. i. 240). The Bonaparte family were very anxious that Josephine should not be crowned. Napoleon had too great a contempt for the weaknesses of average human nature to expect much honesty from Talleyrand. But he was not as yet case-hardened to ingratitude, and was always highly sensitive to caricature and hostile criticism. Talleyrand had been the main cause of the death of the Duc d'Enghien, and was now trying to show that he had wished to prevent it; but possibly the crowning offence was contained in a lady's diary, that fell into the emperor's hands, where Talleyrand is said to have called his master "a regular little Nero" in his system of espionage. The diary in question is in Constant's "Memoirs," vol. i., and this letter helps to fix the error in the dates, probably caused by confusion between the Revolutionary and Gregorian Calendars.
No. 6.
_T._--This may be Talleyrand, whom Mdme. de Remusat in a letter to her husband (September 21st) at Aix, hinted to be on bad terms with the Emperor--a fact confirmed and explained by Meneval. It may also have been Tallien, who returned to France in 1802, where he had been divorced from his unfaithful wife.
_B._--Doubtlessly Bourrienne, who was in disgrace with Napoleon, and who was always trying to impose on Josephine's good nature. No sooner had Napoleon left for Boulogne on July 14th than his former secretary inflicts himself on the wife at Malmaison.
Napoleon joins Josephine at St. Cloud on or before October 13th, where preparations are already being made for the Coronation by the Pope--the first ceremony of the kind for eight centuries.
FOOTNOTES
[57] The Emperor had himself planned the Itinerary, and had mistaken a projected road for a completed one, between Rethel and Marche.
SERIES F
No. 1.
_To Josephine._--She was at Plombieres from August 2 to September 10, but no letter is available for the period, neither to Hortense nor from Napoleon.
_Strasburg._--She is in the former Episcopal Palace, at the foot of the cathedral.
_Stuttgard._--He is driven over from Ludwigsburg on October 4th, and hears the German opera of "Don Juan."
_I am well placed._--On the same day Napoleon writes his brother Joseph that he has already won two great victories--(1) by having no sick or deserters, but many new conscripts; and (2) because the Badenese army and those of Bavaria and Wurtemberg had joined him, and all Germany well disposed.
No. 2.
_Louisburg._--Ludwigsburg.
_In a few days._--To Talleyrand he wrote from Strasburg on September 27: "Within a fortnight we shall see several things."
_A new bride._--This letter, in the collection of his Correspondence ordered by Napoleon III., concludes at this point.
_Electress._--The Princess Charlotte-Auguste-Mathilde (1766-1828), daughter of George III., our Princess Royal, who married Frederick I. Napoleon says she is "not well treated by the Elector, to whom, nevertheless, she seems much attached" (Brotonne, No. 111). She was equally pleased with Napoleon, and wrote home how astonished she was to find him so polite and agreeable a person.
No. 3.
_I have assisted at a marriage._--The bride was the Princess of Saxe-Hildburghhausen, who was marrying the second son of the Elector.
No. 5.
Written at Augsburg. On October 15th he reaches the abbey of Elchingen, which is situated on a height, from whence a wide view is obtained, and establishes his headquarters there.
No. 6.
_Spent the whole of to-day indoors._--This is also mentioned in his Seventh Bulletin (dated the same day), which adds, "But repose is not compatible with the direction of this immense army."
_Vicenza._--Massena did not, however, reach this place till November 3rd. The French editions have _Vienna_, but _Vicenza_ is evidently meant.
No. 7.
He is still at Elchingen, but at Augsburg the next day. On the 21st he issues a decree to his army that Vendemiaire,[58] of which this was the last day but one, should be counted as a campaign for pensions and military services.
_Elchingen._--Meneval speaks of this village "rising in an amphitheatre above the Danube, surrounded by walled gardens, and houses rising one above the other." From it Napoleon saw the city of Ulm below, commanded by his cannon. Marshal Ney won his title of Duke of Elchingen by capturing it on October 14th, and fully deserved it. The Emperor used to leave the abbey every morning to go to the camp before Ulm, where he used to spend the day, and sometimes the night. The rain was so heavy that, until a plank was found, Napoleon sat in a tent with his feet in water (Savary, vol. ii. 196).
_Such a catastrophe._--At Ulm General Mack, with eight field-marshals, seven lieutenant-generals, and 33,000 men surrender. Napoleon had despised Mack even in 1800, when he told Bourrienne at Malmaison, "Mack is a man of the lowest mediocrity I ever saw in my life; he is full of self-sufficiency and conceit, and believes himself equal to anything. He has no talent. I should like to see him some day opposed to one of our good generals; we should then see fine work. He is a boaster, and that is all. He is really one of the most silly men existing, and besides all that, he is unlucky" (vol. i. 304). Napoleon stipulated for Mack's life in one of the articles of the Treaty of Presburg.
No. 9.
_Munich._--Napoleon arrived here on October 24th.
_Lemarois._--A trusty aide-de-camp, who had witnessed Napoleon's civil marriage in March 1796, at 10 P.M.
_I was grieved._--They had no news from October 12th to 21st in Paris, where they learnt daily that Strasburg was in the same predicament. Mdme. de Remusat, at Paris, was equally anxious, and such women, in the Emperor's absence, tended by their presence or even by their correspondence to increase the alarms of Josephine.
_Amuse yourself._--M. Masson (_Josephine, Imperatrice et Reine_, p. 424) has an interesting note of how she used to attend lodge at the Orient in Strasburg, to preside at a "loge d'adoption sous la direction de Madame de Dietrich, grand maitresse titulaire."
_Talleyrand has come._--He was urgently needed to help in the correspondence with the King of Prussia (concerning the French violation of his Anspach territory), with whom Napoleon's relations were becoming more strained.
No. 10.
_We are always in forests._--Baron Lejeune, with his artist's eye, describes his impressions of the Amstetten forest as he travelled through it with Murat the following morning (November 4th). "Those of us who came from the south of Europe had never before realised how beautiful Nature can be in the winter. In this particular instance everything was robed in the most gleaming attire; the silvery rime softening the rich colours of the decaying oak leaves, and the sombre vegetation of the pines. The frozen drapery, combined with the mist, in which everything was more or less enveloped, gave a soft, mysterious charm to the surrounding objects, producing a most beautiful picture. Lit up by the sunshine, thousands of long icicles, such as those which sometimes droop from our fountains and water-wheels, hung like shining lustres from the trees. Never did ball-room shine with so many diamonds; the long branches of the oaks, pines, and other forest trees were weighed down by the masses of hoar-frost, while the snow converted their summits into rounded roofs, forming beneath them grottoes resembling those of the Pyrenean mountains, with their shining stalactites and graceful columns" (vol. i. 24).
_My enemies._--Later in the day Napoleon writes from Lambach to the Emperor of Austria a pacific letter, which contains the paragraph, "My ambition is wholly concentrated on the re-establishment of my commerce and of my marine, and England grievously opposes itself to both."
No. 11.
Written from Lintz, the capital of Upper Austria, where Napoleon was on the 4th.
No. 12.
Napoleon took up his abode at the palace of Schoenbrunn on the 14th, and proves his "two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage" by passing through Vienna at that time the following morning.
No. 13.
_They owe everything to you._--Aubenas quotes this, and remarks (vol. ii. 326): "No one had pride in France more than Napoleon, stronger even than his conviction of her superiority in the presence of other contemporary sovereigns and courts. He wishes that in Germany, where she will meet families with all the pride and sometimes all the haughtiness of their ancestry, Josephine will not forget that she is Empress of the French, superior to those who are about to receive her, and who owe full respect and homage to her."
No. 14.
_Austerlitz._--Never was a victory more needful; but never was the Emperor more confident. Savary says that it would take a volume to contain all that emanated from his mind during that twenty-four hours (December 1-2). Nor was it confined to military considerations. General Segur describes how he spent his evening meal with his marshals, discussing with Junot the last new tragedy (_Les Templiers_, by Raynouard), and from it to Racine, Corneille, and the fatalism of our ancestors.
_December 2nd_ was a veritable Black Monday for the Coalition in general, and for Russia in particular, where Monday is always looked upon as an unlucky day. Their forebodings increased when, on the eve of the battle, the Emperor Alexander was thrown from his horse (Czartoriski, vol. ii. 106).
No. 17.
_A long time since I had news of you._--Josephine was always a bad correspondent, but at this juncture was reading that stilted but sensational romance--"Caleb Williams;" or hearing the "Achilles" of Paer, or the "Romeo and Juliet" of Zingarelli in the intervals of her imperial progress through Germany. M. Masson, not often too indulgent to Josephine, thinks her conduct excusable at this period--paying and receiving visits, dressing and redressing, always in gala costume, and without a moment's solitude.
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 Archduchess. 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, assured 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 Fanny 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-Duchess 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 Wuerzburg 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 Wuerzburg. 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 multitude 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 compass 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 L500 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 "_assez 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 repassing the Rhine, it has passed 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 cuirass, her tunic of cloth of silver, her red buskins with golden spurs," she resembled, as the bulletin said, one of the heroines of Tasso. 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 aptitude 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 assembled, 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. Masson, 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."
The latter was, however, celebrated both for her beauty and her intrigues;[60] and when, in 1799, Bonaparte seized supreme power the fair lady[61] invaded Barras in his bath to inform him of it; but found her indolent Ulysses only capable of ejaculating, "What can be done? that man has taken us all in!" Napoleon probably remembered this, and may refer to her rather than to the Queen of Prussia in the next letter, where he makes severe strictures on intriguing women. Moreover, Napoleon in his early campaigns had played a ridiculous part in some of Gillray's most indecent cartoons, where Mmes. Tallien and Josephine took with Barras the leading roles; and as Madame Tallien was not considered respectable in 1796, she was hardly a fit friend for the Empress of the French ten years later. In the interval this lady, divorced a second time, had married the Prince de Chimay (Caraman). Napoleon knew also that she had been the mistress of Ouvrard, the banker, who in his Spanish speculations a few months earlier had involved the Bank of France to the tune of four millions sterling, and forced Napoleon to make a premature peace after Austerlitz. The Emperor had returned at white heat to Paris, and wished he could build a gallows for Ouvrard high enough for him to be on view throughout France. Madame Tallien's own father, M. de Cabarrus, was a French banker in Spain, and probably in close relation with Ouvrard.
No. 10.
Written from Berlin.