In her memoirs she says that she and her husband excited general envy by the high position the First Consul had given them. She was first Lady in Waiting, and subsequently Lady of the Household, her husband being "attached to Napoleon's household." She says that she was witty and of a refined mind, and though she was less "good-looking" than her companions, she had the advantage of being able to "charm his mind," and she was almost the only woman with whom he condescended to converse. She relates residing in the camp at Boulogne "and having breakfast and dinner daily with Bonaparte." In the evenings they used to "discuss philosophy, literature, and art, or listen to the First Consul relating about the years of his youth and early achievements."

No doubt the young Madame de Remusat became assured in the same way as Madame de Stael that she would one day be raised to heights of glory unequalled in history, and the disappointment embittered her. She admits that she "suffered on account of blighted hopes and deceived affections and the failure of her calculations." Moreover, Josephine had an eye on the lady whose husband in evil times sought her influence with Napoleon to stretch out a helping hand and save them from the poverty by which they were beset. Napoleon's big heart spontaneously responded to the appeal of his fascinating spouse, the result being that favours were heaped upon M. de Remusat and his wife from time to time, and Josephine's goodness was repaid by seeing Madame in feline fashion purring at her Imperial master's affections, and on the authority of Madame de Remusat she "becomes cold and jealous." Finding that Napoleon did not appreciate her love-making, she, like Madame de Stael under similar circumstances, took to intriguing, which got her quickly into disgrace. She is anxious to make her fall as light as possible in the public eye, so relates that he told her that "his desire was to make her a great lady, but he could not be expected to do this unless she showed devotion." But in spite of the wife's defection, as is always Napoleon's way, he does not visit her sins on the husband, but raises him to the important posts of Grand Master of the Robes, High Chamberlain, and then Superintendent of Theatres, and in addition gave him large sums to keep up his status, and notwithstanding Josephine's cause for "cold jealousy," Madame de Remusat was generously kept in her service after Marie Louise had become Empress. M. de Remusat remained in the Emperor's service until the fall of the Empire, and then went over to Louis XVIII. Both of these sycophants were content to accept the favours of the Imperial couple and eat their bread and cringe at their feet while they plotted with the plotters for the Emperor's downfall.

Unhappily for the veracity and probity of Madame Remusat as a history writer, her letters containing notes jotted down day by day as they occurred have been published, and the memoirs put side by side with these throbbings of the heart reveal an incomparable baseness that makes one wonder at the reckless, blind partisanship which induced her descendants to give the memoirs to an intelligent public.

In the memoirs she says:—"Nothing is so base as his soul; it is closed against all generous impulses, and possesses no true grandeur. I noticed that he always failed to understand and to admire a noble action;" and again she goes on to say that "In war he foresaw the means of calling away our attention from the reflections which, sooner or later, his government could not fail to suggest to us, and he reserved it in order to dazzle, or at least to enforce silence on us. Bonaparte felt that he would be infallibly lost the day when his enforced inactivity enabled us to think both of him and of ourselves." "What a relief whenever the Emperor went away! His absence always seemed to bring solace. People breathed more freely."

Now this would have been all very well. It was the stereotyped phraseology of Napoleon's avowed enemies. He knew it, and viewed it with contempt and derision, and until Madame de Remusat and her snuffling, cringing husband became swollen with over-indulgence and smitten with wounded pride, they regarded language such as now appears in her memoirs as mere froth. She practically says that she held the same views in 1818 as she did from 1802 to 1808, but when she wrote this she no doubt relied on her correspondence being kept snugly private or destroyed; but it has been published, and here are some amazing extracts from it:—

"I often think, my dear, of that Empire, the territory of which extends to Antwerp! Consider what a man he must be who can rule it single-handed, and what few instances history offers like him!"[24] "Whilst he creates, so to speak, new nations in his progress, people must be struck, from one end of Europe to the other, by the remarkably prosperous state of France. Her Navy, formed in two years, after a ruinous revolution, and assuming at last a menacing attitude after so long, excited the scoffs of a shortsighted enemy."

"When again I reflect on the peace we enjoy, our wise and moderate liberty, which is quite sufficient for me, the glory my country is covered with, the pomp and even the magnificence surrounding us, and in which I delight, because it is proof that success has crowned our efforts; when, in short, I consider that all this prosperity is the work of one man, I am filled with admiration and gratitude."[25]

"What I write here, my dear, is, of course, strictly between ourselves, for many people would be anxious to ascribe to these feelings some other cause than that which really inspires them; besides, it seems to me that we are less eager to express the praises that come from the heart than those that proceed from the mind."[26]

"Thank goodness, I am at last happy and contented!! What a pleasure it is to see the Emperor again, and how much that pleasure will be felt here! This splendid campaign, this glorious peace, this prompt return, all is really marvellous."[27]

"Like woman, the French are rather impatient and exacting; it is true that the Emperor has spoilt us in the campaign; indeed, no lover was ever more anxious to gratify the wishes of his mistress than His Majesty to meet our desires. You demand a prompt march? Very well, the army that was at Boulogne will find itself, three weeks later, in Germany. You ask for the capture of a town? Here is the surrender of Ulm. You are not satisfied!! You are craving for more victories? Here they are: Here is Vienna which you wanted, and also a pitched battle, in order that no kind of success may be wanting. Add to these a whole series of noble and generous deeds, of words full of grandeur and kindness, and always to the purpose, so much so that our hearts share also that glory, and can join it to all the national pride it arouses in us."[28]

"I used to cry bitterly at that time, for I felt so affected that, had I met the Emperor at the moment, I should, I believe, have thrown my arms round his neck, although I should, afterwards, have been compelled to fall on my knees and ask pardon for my conduct."[29]

So overcome with boundless admiration is she that her soul yearns for the gift of being able to do him full justice by writing a history, a panegyric, a book, in fact, that would show him to be immeasurably above all men living or dead. She fears that people cannot see his nobility and greatness as she does. She is bewildered and acclaims him a god. Here is another outburst of passionate devotion:—

"That undaunted courage, carried even to rashness, and which was always crowned with success, that calm assurance in the midst of danger, with that wise foresight and that prompt resolution, arouse always new feelings of admiration which it seems can never be surpassed."[30]

It will be seen her letters shape well for the fulfilment of the great ambition of her life, i.e., to picture him as he was. The writing is good, the description picturesque, and I believe the impartial mind will also regard it as accurate. She believes "that even persons who are hardest to please must be compelled to admit that he is a most amiable sovereign." She is smitten with the feeling of gratitude, and says it is so sweet that she really regards it as another favour. She wishes her husband could "often secure some of those comforting smiles from the master," and tells him he is "no fool to be fond of those smiles," and promises to congratulate him if he secures some.

She asks God to watch over him (such will always be her prayer) when he is fighting and conquering. Her heart is grieved when he is at a great distance from them. She eulogises his great qualities to her son, and advises him "to study all that she was able to tell him of the Emperor, and write about it when he grew up," and the boy exclaimed, "Mother, what you have told me sounds like one of Plutarch's lives!"

But there comes a time when Napoleon sees that the price he has to pay for adulation is too high, for, like most over-pampered people, Madame de Remusat seems to have got the idea of equality badly into her head. She became waspish, exacting, claiming more than her share of emoluments, seeking for attentions which her "amiable sovereign" saw in the fitness of things it would be folly to bestow. She mistook wholesome justice for tyranny, defied discipline, and not only connived at treason, but prayed for the extinction of him against whom it was directed. Disaster overtook him, he fell, and in her delirium of malice and joy she bethought it an opportune moment to write what are known as her memoirs, refuting therein all her former eulogies and opinions so vividly told in the "Letters of Madame de Remusat." Now that adversity so terrible overshadows the matchless hero of the letters, she throws every scruple aside, and warms to her task in writing unstinted, gross, and manifest libels. Contrast with the "letters" these quotations from the memoirs. She avows that "nothing is so base as his soul. It is closed against all generous impulses; he never could admire a noble action." "He possesses an innate depravity of nature, and has a special taste for evil." "His absence brought solace, and made people breathe freely." "He is devoid of every kind of personal courage, and generous impulses are foreign to him." "He put a feeling of restraint into everybody that approached him." "He was feared everywhere." "He delighted to excite fear." "He did not like to make people comfortable." "He was afraid of the least familiarity." This latter grievance, combined of course with the rest, is quite significant, and we are justified in assuming that the Lady in Waiting has been taking liberties, and has been deservedly snubbed by His Imperial Majesty. It is perhaps necessary to pause here and remind the reader that on the authority of her son, and subsequently of her grandson, these memoirs were written entirely "without malice," and the sole object of writing them at all was that "the truth should be told."

Very well then. Are we to believe the letters or the memoirs, because in the former she over and over again declares that "his comely manners were irresistible"; but in the memoirs with audacious bitterness she affirms "not only is he ill-mannered but brutal."

Such effrontery is beyond criticism. She finds it "impossible to depict the disinterested loyalty with which she longed for the King's return," and describes the hero of her letters as a ruthless destroyer of all worth, and being brought so low, she is straitened by the demands of "truth" and "grows quite disheartened."

It will be observed that it is always truth which is the abiding motive, it matters not whether it is letters or memoirs. She avows it is "truth" she writes. "The love of truth," says the editor in his preface, "gave her courage to persevere in her task for more than two years." That is, it took her more than two years to write the "truths" contained in the memoirs disavowing the "truths" so vehemently given in the letters; the former book pregnant with the bitterness of a writer without heart and principle, and with political and personal motives running through its pages like a canker, while the latter, radiant in luxuriant adulation, gapes at her memory with retributive justice.

The renegade son served the renegade and ungrateful mother ill when he advised her to write what is a barefaced recantation of her former statements. Napoleon has said that "People are rarely drawn to you by favours conferred upon them." He had many examples of this truth, but none more striking than the above. Madame de Remusat and her husband were raised from poverty to affluence by Napoleon, and the memory of all the favours that were showered upon them by the man she declares she loved should have kept them from hate and disloyalty, and forbidden the writing of such unworthy vituperations against him.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Madame de Remusat burnt her original memoirs during the Hundred Days, doubtless because she had in her mind the probability that Napoleon might firmly establish himself on the throne, and the discovery of anti-Napoleon MSS. might have acted seriously against herself and family being appointed to important positions. Moreover, the greater danger of getting herself into trouble was constantly in her mind.

[24] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p. 195.

[25] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p, 196.

[26] Ibid., vol. i. p. 160.

[27] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 2.

[28] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p. 190.

[29] Ibid., vol. i. p. 393.

[30] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. ii. p. 45.



CHAPTER VI

JOSEPHINE

One of the phenomena of human affairs is the part destined for Josephine, daughter of M. Joseph Gaspard Tascher de la Pagerie, sugar-planter at Martinique, and friend of the Marquis de Beauharnais, whose son Alexandre was fated to marry her when she was but sixteen years of age. The marriage took place on December 13, 1779, at Noisy-le-Grand. The pompous young bridegroom speaks of his young bride in appreciative terms in a letter to his father, and in order that his parent may not be disappointed as to her beauty, he explains that in this respect she may not be up to his expectations. He regards the pleasure of being with her as very sweet, and forms the resolution of putting her through a course of education, as this had been grievously neglected.

The father of Alexandre is said to have been charmed with the sweetness of Josephine's character, but then he was not her husband, and it soon became apparent that the union was ill-assorted, and so it came to pass that marital relations were entirely broken off after the birth of Hortense, subsequently dressmaker's apprentice, Queen of Holland, and mother of Napoleon III. Alexandre had gone to Martinique, and it was there the news of his daughter's birth came to him. He knew before leaving France that his wife was enceinte, and expressed his pleasure to her. The Marquis Beauharnais had assured his friend, Joseph Tascher de la Pagerie, that his "son was worthy of being his son-in-law, and that Nature had endowed him with fine and noble qualities." These virtues seem to have been dissolved with remarkable rapidity after his marriage, as it was well known before his departure on the voyage to Martinique that he had been diligently unfaithful to the poor "uneducated" little Creole girl who really thought she loved him. From all accounts, and I have read many, Alexandre Beauharnais was an ill-conditioned cruel prig. This excellent son with "fine and noble qualities" had not been long at Martinique before he associated himself with a lady of questionable virtue, who was much older than he. This person's dislike to Josephine caused her to pour into his willing ears and receptive mind scandalous stories of his childwife's love intrigues before she left her native island. This gave Alexandre a fine opportunity of writing a letter to her, disclaiming the paternity of Hortense, and accusing her of intrigues with "an officer in the Martinique regiment, and another man who sailed in a ship called the Caesar." He declares he knows the contents of her letters to her lovers, and "swears by the Heaven which enlightens him that the child is another's, and that strange blood flows in its veins," and "it shall never know his shame"; and so the virtuous Alexandre goes rambling on, until he comes to the slashing finish in the good old style that persons similarly situated adopt to those whom they have grievously injured. He soars between elegant politeness and old-time aristocratic ferocity: "Goodbye, madam, this is the last letter you will receive from your desperate and unhappy husband." Then comes the inevitable postscript, with an avenging bite embodying the spirit of murder. He is to be in France soon if his health does not break down under the load she has cast upon him. He warns her to be out of the house on his arrival, because, if she is not, "she will find in him a tyrant." The whole letter is indicative of a low-down unworthy scamp, a mere collection of transparent verbiage, intended as a means of ridding himself of a woman he had nothing in common with, and a cover to his own unfaithfulness.

But whatever may be the interpretation of his motives, on his coming back to Paris he kept his word. Conjugal relations were not renewed. His family were indignant at the treatment Josephine was receiving at the hands of this pompous libertine, and he assures her that of "the two, she is not the one to be most pitied."

M. Masson declares that there was never a reconciliation, and that they lived apart, but met in society, and spoke to one another, mainly about their children's education. Josephine caused him to withdraw before her lawyer the gross and unfounded charges he had made against her and to agree to a satisfactory allowance.

Alexandre, finding soldiering distasteful, embarked upon a political career as an aristocrat Liberal. His rise to position was swift, and after the death of Mirabeau he followed him as President of the Assembly. Before his fall came, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Rhine, and at the head of sixty thousand men failed to relieve Mayence and resigned his command.

His Liberal pretensions did not prevent him being included amongst the proscribed. He was made captive, accused of attempting to escape, condemned to death and guillotined. Josephine's device of reassuring the Revolutionists of her conversion to Republicanism by apprenticing Hortense to a dressmaker and Eugene to a carpenter did not avail. She was suspected and sent to Les Carmes, where frequent conversations took place between her philosophic and abandoned husband and herself, mainly concerning their children's education, and had not the reaction against the regime of blood brought about the fall of Robespierre, she would assuredly have shared the fate of Alexandre; and had the cry of "A bas le tyrant" been heard a few days earlier, Beauharnais would have escaped too, and cheated Josephine of becoming Empress of the French and Queen of Italy. As it was, some of the very same people who but a short time before had harangued the mob to "Behold the friend of the people, the great defender of liberty," switched their murderous vengeance on to their late idol, and ere many hours the widow Beauharnais was set free. The thought of the appalling end and the brevity of time that seemed left to her impressed Josephine with all its ghastly horror. She had shrieked and wept herself into a deathlike illness. The doctor predicted that she could not survive more than a week, and for this reason she escaped being brought before the Tribunal.

A wondrous Providence this, which, with frantic speed, broke the power of a hideous monster, and thereby saved the woman who was to enter upon a new era, and to be borne swiftly on to share the glory of an unequalled Empire.

M. Masson's theory is that Josephine's womanly grief had much to do with awakening the sentiment of Paris, and breaking the Reign of Terror; and, indeed, there is some reason in this view, for tears are not only useful as an indication of sorrow, suffering, or conquest, but an effective means of gaining sympathy. Josephine was an adept at trying the efficacy of weeping, and if M. Masson has gauged the influence of melting the heart of the spirit of massacre aright, then Josephine was gifted with, and made the instrument of, a divine instinct that should claim attention and reverence for all time, even though her subsequent misdeeds occasionally incline us to avert the eye.

But it is likely that the sombre satire of the pure and beautiful Jeanne-Marie Philipon touched the heart of Paris more than the shedding of tears and shrieking lamentations. The wife of Roland, led to the scaffold, faced with the stern certainty of death, asks with calm dignity for pen, ink, and paper, "so that she might write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." The request was not granted. Then looking at the statue of Liberty, she exclaimed with fierce dignity, "O Liberty! What things are done in thy name!" and these throbbing magical words reverberated through France with wonderful effect. The guilty populace, shuddering with superstitious awe at the revolting horrors committed in the name of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, flashed a thought on the scaffold of the stainless victim, then on the loathsome prisons that were filled with suspects, rich and poor, all over France. Then, in time, the dooming to death of some of the prominent polecats who committed murder in the name of liberty and fraternity brought Robespierreism to an end. Robespierre himself was cursed on the scaffold by a woman who sent him to "hell with the curses of all wives and mothers," and Samson did the rest. And it may be logically assumed that the parting words of Jeanne-Marie Philipon at the foot of the scaffold inoculated the public mind, not only with the horrors that were being committed in the name of Liberty, but what things were cantishly being said in its name. I like to think of the stainless lady's inspired phrase rather than Josephine's tears as being in some degree responsible for the end of the Reign of Terror.

After her release, Josephine's shattered health was a cause of anxiety, but this was soon re-established, and she quickly put her emotions aside and plunged into gaiety with an alacrity that makes one wonder whether she had more than spasmodic regret at the awful doom that had come to her husband, who left a somewhat penitent letter behind, wherein he speaks of his brotherly affection for her, bids her "goodbye," exhorts her "to be the consoler of those whom she knows he loves," and "by her care to prolong his life in their hearts." "Goodbye," says he; "for the last time in my life I press you and my children to my breast."

These posthumous reflections and instructions did not impress the widow with any apparent interest. The picture recorded of their tragic married life is not sweet. Neither lived up to the great essentials which assure happiness.

Before her imprisonment the gossip-mongers were whispering round rumours of violent flirtations, and even when she was in Les Carmes they said that she and her fellow-prisoner, General Hoche, were too familiar, and coupled the name of the ex-Count with that of a young lady suspect. The truth of such accusations seems highly improbable, and they may well be regarded as malicious slander. It is not unlikely that Josephine was on friendly terms with the General before they met in Les Carmes, but that it was more than friendship is a mere hypothesis. Her relation with that unspeakable libertine Barras was especially unfortunate. No doubt she was driven to extremities after her release. Her fate was as hard as it is possible to conceive. She was without the proper means of sustenance for herself and her family, and appears to have lost no time in really becoming the chosen friend of a creature who took advantage of her and then betrayed her to the world. It is he who tells in his memoirs the sad and sickening story of his connection with Josephine, and gloats over the opportunity it gives him of repeating conversations he had with General Hoche as to her love entanglements. He declares that she was "the patient mistress of Hoche in the sight of the whole world."

The editor of the memoirs to some extent tones down the brutal statements of the author. But a man who publicly exposes the relations he has had with a fascinating woman who gives herself to him may not be readily believed when he deliberately involves his own friends in the liaisons. There is no question of what his part was in the degradation of Josephine, but the luxury of dragging other names into the moral quagmire, in order, it may be, to justify his own dealings and to further debase her, could only be undertaken by a person soaked with the venom of indecency, and, in this case, had no other object than that of gratifying his malice against her husband. His assumption of moral superiority is quite entertaining when he, the seducer and corrupter, speaks of the unfortunate woman's "libertinism," and calls her in his bitterness "a licentious Creole."

This representative of the Republic one and indivisible, embodying Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, at the end of the eighteenth century, will forever disgrace the judgment and moral condition of the France which knew Charlemagne.

"Citizen" Barras repudiates the story of Eugene asking the Commander-in-Chief for his beheaded father's sword. He claims that Napoleon himself invented the story. But it is highly improbable that Napoleon would risk at the beginning of his career having his veracity doubted. In itself, the incident is a small matter. The only real interest attached to it is the touching pathos of the small boy asking for and receiving the sword, which, of course, gave his mother the opportunity of calling to thank the General for his goodness, and in this way it has historic importance, as Napoleon and Josephine were married four months after, i.e., March 9, 1796, her age being thirty-two and his twenty-five.

The quibble is that of a small man searching in every pond for mud to throw at his master's memory. Napoleon gave the facts to Barry O'Meara at St. Helena, and they also appear in the "Memorial de St. Helena." Had the introduction of these two remarkable people not come about in this way, it would have been brought about in some other. But, whether the story has any interest further than the writer has stated or not, it is safer to believe Napoleon than Barras, who boasted after the success of Napoleon in Italy that it was he who had perceived in him a genius and urged the Directory to appoint him Commander-in-Chief. Carnot is indignant at this impudent falsehood, and declares that it was he and not Barras who nominated and urged the appointment of Bonaparte. Certainly Carnot's story is the accepted one. It matters little who the selected spokesman of the inspiration was. France needed a man, and he was found.

On the eve of this obscure and neglected young soldier's departure to spread the blessings of Fraternity in Italy, the voluptuous Barras was commissioned by him to announce to the Directory his marriage with Citizeness Tascher Beauharnais. Then began a period of devouring love and war such as the world has never beheld. In the midst of strife and strenuous responsibility, this young missionary, representing the solacing new doctrine of symbolic brotherhood, neither shirks nor forgets the responsibilities of his instructions to lay Italy at his feet.

Nor does he for a moment forget his wedded obligations. He is in love, nay, desperately in love. The image of Josephine is constantly soaring around him, and he pours forth ebullitions of frantic devotion at the cannon's mouth, in the Canton, anywhere, and everywhere. He is as rich in phrase as he is in courage and resource. He finds time to scrawl a few burning words of passion which indicate that his soul is at once aflame with thoughts of her and the grim military task he has undertaken.

He leads to battle flashing with the spirit of assured victory and inspired by the belief that it has been written that he is the chosen force which is to regenerate misgoverned nationalities. Order out of chaos; moderation in the hour of victory; no interference with any one's religious belief; stern discipline—these were some of the behests of this young Titan, whose startling and victorious campaigns were amazing an astonished world and causing significant apprehension in the minds of the Directory, who decided to check the swift process of ascendancy by giving instructions that he was to give over the command of Lombardy to General Kellerman, and go south to commence raiding other parts of Italy, including Rome and Naples.

To this he promptly sends a vigorous though respectful reply, which is intended to convey that they are to have done with such impractical foolery. It is a world-shaking fight he has on hand. The honour and military glory of France are at stake. It is not for mere theoretic upholders of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity to meddle with such things. He says to them, "Kellerman is an excellent General, and could lead an army as well as I," but then he goes on to plead the superiority of his army, always modestly leaving himself outside the praise he takes care to bestow on others, and adds with fervour, "The command must remain in the hands of one man." "I believe," says he, "that one bad General is better than two good ones." "The art of war, like the art of government, is a matter of careful handling." Then with delicious frankness he flashes out: "I cannot allow myself to have my feet entangled." "A free hand or resignation." That is his ultimatum. This thunderbolt of bewildering audacity sent a flutter through the sanctuary of Fraternity, and in hot haste a message of confidence, coupled with an order that he shall be left in supreme control, was dispatched by a vigilant energetic courier. The Directory were made to see that a great power had arisen which would hold dominion over them.

And yet this young and terrible conqueror, who judiciously dominated every will in the process of his achievements, he who defiantly told his masters that he would not suffer his "feet to be entangled" by their amateurish absurdities, was entangled for a time by a rapturous infatuation and allowed a giddy woman with seductive habits and a silken voice to cajole, dominate, ridicule, and ignore him. His imploring theatrical appeals to her to come to him are piteously pathetic. The rational parts of his letters are without example in neat concise phrase, and portray a man possessed of great human virtues. It is when the love-storm attacks him that he flies into extravagances, such as when he writes that "she has more than robbed him of his soul," and that "she is devouring his blood." He writes to his brother Joseph that he loves her to madness, and to Carnot even he does the same thing. Perhaps the most extravagant outburst of all is when he begs that she is to let him see some of her faults, and to be less kind, gracious, and beautiful. "Your tears drive away my reason and scorch my blood." "You set my poor heart ablaze." He complains of her letters being "cold as friendship," and adds, "But oh! how I am infatuated."

Josephine has never been addressed in such consuming language before. She is flattered, and her little head becomes swollen with the idea of greatness. The ridiculous endearments amuse her. She must not allow such opportunities of creating envy to pass, so she shows the letters as they come along to her most intimate friends, amongst whom Barras still continues high on the list, and with an air of dizzy pride she playfully says Bonaparte is "very droll." And really, Josephine was right. Some of his letters are "droll," but they are genuine, and this highly honoured woman, launched into prominence and position, and reaping the laurels of his work disgraced her womanhood by showing his letters, and doubly disgraced herself by ridiculing them.

It was not until Murat, Junot, and Joseph Bonaparte were sent by Napoleon to Paris from the seat of war with important dispatches, and also with letters to her, that it dawned upon her that she had carried her unwillingness to join her husband far enough. Doubtless the gallant commissioners had given her a hint that further refusal meant inevitable reprisals. It is quite feasible that the rollicking Junot, who was always prepared to give his soul for Bonaparte, was frank enough to intimate that there was a risk of driving her husband into the arms of some covetous female, many of whom were angling in the hope of capturing the brilliant and rising General, and that already he was showing signs of jealousy and suspicion of her good faith.

News of fresh victories was coming in, fetes were held in honour of them, crowds of people congregated, and at the sight of her leaning on the arm of Junot after leaving the Luxembourg they shout, "Long live General Bonaparte! Long live Citizeness Bonaparte!" She is enthralled by the adulation which reflected glory showers upon her. Her spirit rebels against leaving all its pleasures and pomps. But she has exhausted every canon of truth in excuses, even that of being pregnant, and finds herself inevitably driven to abandon the seat of joy and easy morals and set off for Milan with her dog "Fortune" and Eugene, her son. Tears flow copiously at the thought of her wrongs, but these are dried up with the compensating opportunity of commencing a flirtation with Murat, who is soon to become the husband of Caroline Bonaparte.

The popular opinion was that it was Junot who was the object of her designs, but the future Duchess d'Abrantes scornfully repudiates this, and declares that Junot's devotion to his beloved General forbade him reciprocating his wife's indiscretion, so he made love to Louise Compoint, Josephine's waiting-maid, instead, the result being that Louise was requested to leave the service of the offended Josephine.

On arrival at Milan, Napoleon was absent, so the honour of receiving her was deputed to the Milanese Due de Serbelloni, who took her in regal style to stay at his palace. On Napoleon meeting his wife for the first time since their marriage his joy was unbounded. Marmont, who betrayed him and France in later days, says that "at that time he lived only for his wife, and never had purer, truer, or more exclusive love taken possession of the heart of a man, and that a man of so superior an order."

Napoleon had still much work to do, and many hard battles to fight, so that they were frequently separated during the remaining months before he had freed Italy and beaten the Austrians. On no occasion when he was absent from her did he neglect sending letters on fire with the assurance of unabated love, but they frequently indicate not only a conviction of her indifference, but a suspicion that it is more, which is promptly nullified by further explosions such as "kisses as burning as my heart and as pure as you." Poor Napoleon! he is soon to be disillusioned. She is the same old Josephine in Italy as she was in Paris. He pleads with her to send him letters, for she must "know how dear they are to him." "I do not live," he tells her, "when I am far from you." "My life's happiness is in the society of my sweet Josephine." Again he writes, "A thousand kisses as fiery as my soul, as chaste as yourself! I have just summoned the courier; he tells me that he crossed over to your house, and that you told him you had no commands. Fie! Naughty, undutiful, cruel, tyrannous, jolly little monster. You laugh at my threats, at my infatuation; ah! you well know that if I could shut you up in my heart I would put you in prison there!" This playful, gloomy, humorous, and tender quotation does not emanate from the heart of a monster, but from an unequalled lovesick soul confiding the innermost secrets of his mind to an inglorious helpmate, whose follies during the first years of their married life were a cruel humiliation to him.

She courted ruin with cool dissolute persistency. She deceived, lied, and wept with the felicity of a fanatic. She sought and found happiness at the cost of not only self-respect, but honour and virtue. She was not a shrew, but a born coquette, without morals rather than immoral, and, withal, a superb enigmatic who would have made the Founder of our faith shed tears of sorrow. It is by distorting facts that her eulogists make it appear that she was a loving and devoted wife during the early years of her second marriage.

On her arrival at Milan from Paris she had presented to her many army officers, amongst whom was a young Hussar, the friend and assistant General of Leclerc, who became the husband of Paulette, the giddy little schoolgirl sister of Napoleon. Josephine, at this period of her history was famous for her aversion to chastity, so that it is not altogether inexplicable that she should have sought the distinction of making Hippolyte Charles her lover. He was fascinating, witty, dressed with splendour, and was quite up to her standard of moral quality. The friendship grew into intimacy, so that he became a frequent visitor to Josephine during Napoleon's absence.

It was scarcely likely that this love affair, which was assuming dramatic proportions, could be long kept from the knowledge of Napoleon. The mocking critics of the camp and the stern moralists amongst the civilians vied with each other in babbling commentary of the growing dilapidated reputation that the Commander-in-Chief's wife was precipitately acquiring. Wherever she is or goes, so long as Bonaparte is at a safe distance, Charles is hanging on to her skirts. Some writers have said that on the occasion of her visit to Genoa to attend the fetes given by the Republic he was in attendance, and it is most likely that this clumsy act of strategy on the part of Josephine brought about the climax. Unquestionably her movements were being watched by members of the Bonaparte family. They not unnaturally felt that the scandal was exposing them as well as their brother to ridicule.

But, as frequently happens, great events are brought about in the most unexpected way. The vivacious Paulette had fallen in love with Freron, a man of forty, holding a high position in the Government service. Napoleon was strongly averse to the match, so decided that she should become the wife of General Leclerc, aged twenty-five, who was said to be Napoleon's double. Hippolyte Charles had been the friend of Leclerc, and Paulette resolutely set her mind on inflicting salutary punishment on her sister-in-law for the wrong she was doing her brother. She quickly managed to wriggle confidences out of Leclerc concerning the Josephine-Charles connection, then peached. Charles was banished from the army, and, on the authority of Madame Leclerc, we learn that Josephine "nearly died of grief." The avenging little vixen had put a big spoke in the wheel, although there were other powerful agencies that had no small part in bringing light to the aching and devout heart.

From this dates the fall of Josephine's complete magical divinity over him, and a new era begins. We hear no more of "shutting her up in his heart," or of sending her "kisses as fiery as his soul and as chaste as herself"; though to the end his letters are studiously kind and even reverential.

Meanwhile, the intrepid General, having brought the campaign of Italy and Austria to a successful end, came back to Paris, received the plaudits of a grateful and adoring nation, and the doubtful favour of a jealous Directory. They banqueted him at the Luxembourg with every outward sign of satisfaction. Talleyrand and Barras made eloquent and flattering speeches of his accomplishments and talents, and the latter folded him in his arms as a concluding token of affection. Josephine revelled in the gaiety and honours that encompassed them, while her husband sought the consolation of privacy.

After a short though not inactive stay in Paris, he was given command of the Army of the East, and sailed from Toulon on May 19, 1798, in the Orient (which came to a tragic end at Aboukir), and Josephine waved her handkerchief, soaked in tears, as the fleet passed from view.

Her doings do not interest us until she again came across the young ex-officer Charles in Paris, some time in 1799, and, at his request no doubt, she introduced him to a firm of army contractors, and for the ostensible purpose of showing his gratitude, he called at Malmaison to thank her. This act of grace could have been done with greater propriety by letter, though there may have been reasons for not putting in writing anything that might associate the wife of the Commander-in-Chief with having dealings with army contractors, even to the extent of interesting herself on behalf of a man who was dismissed the service for carrying on an intrigue with his General's wife, who happened to be Josephine herself.

But putting aside the unpardonable breach of faith in allowing a renewal of the intimacy with such a man, the fact of a lady in her position being mixed up with a firm of this character might have seriously compromised Napoleon, and for this reason alone her act was highly reprehensible. Charles was not slow to avail himself of Josephine's hospitality, and became a regular visitor. This further lapse of loyalty to the absent husband was transmitted to Egypt, and very naturally determined him on the necessity of taking proceedings to get a divorce, but although Napoleon had ceased, so far as he could, to be the dreadful simpleton lover of other days, he failed to gauge the grip the old fascination had of him.

He believed the avenging spirit that guided him to definite conclusions was real, and with the thought of "divorce, public and sensational divorce," buzzing in his head, combined with another of State policy lurking in the background, he set sail for France, and created wild excitement in domestic and Directorial circles by unexpectedly landing at Frejus.

He then made his way, as quickly as the enthusiasm of the cheering populace allowed him, towards his house in the Rue de la Victoire; but the penitent (?) Josephine was not there. She had gone to meet him, taken the wrong road, and missed throwing herself into his arms as was her intention. He asks excitedly, "Is she ill?" and the significant wink of her enemies threw him into paroxysms of grief. His friend Collot calls and reminds him that the hope of the nation is centred on him. His wrath is proof that he is still in love, and Collot fears that the magical effect of her appearance will bring forgiveness. "Never," shouts the irate husband. "How little you know me, Collot. Rather than abase myself, I would tear my heart out and throw it on the fire."

But Collot knew him better than he chose to admit he knew himself, and we shall see that his heart was not thrown "on the fire," but given again to the erring Josephine, who was travelling back post-haste from Lyons. She arrived broken in spirit and wearied unto death. Napoleon, obviously not quite sure of his determination to refuse her admittance, had bolted the door, and was stamping about the room with a glare in his piercing eye as though he were planning an onslaught that was to be furiously contested. Josephine arrives, knocks at the door, implores him to open it, and addresses him as "Mon ami, mon bon ami." There is no response, and in her frenzy of despair she weeps and beats her head against the door, and piteously pleads for the opportunity of justifying herself. But still he holds out. And then her unfailing resource suggests that Hortense and Eugene, whom he loves so well, shall be brought as the medium of compassion to their distracted mother. They come, and the bolts are drawn. Their stepfather admits them to his presence. They kneel at his feet and appeal to him to continue to be the good, kind father he has ever been, and to receive their mother back to his affections.

It is all over now with Napoleon. He is never proof against tears, so sends for their mother, who falls into his arms and faints. She is tenderly laid into his bed, saved from her woeful fate, and when Lucien Bonaparte arrived by command next morning, to take instructions for the impending divorce proceedings, that horror had disappeared from their outlook, and both Josephine and Napoleon were wrapped in a drowsy joy.

Josephine, gifted with irresistible subtlety and skilful in the art and use of hysteria, had rekindled the embers of infatuation that was never more to be totally quenched. In all likelihood she would give a different explanation of her conduct to Napoleon than that given him by Lucien and other members of his family. It is not an undue stretch of imagination to conclude that she assured him that her heart was shared with none other, though the assertion may be regarded as a daring fabrication. She did not gauge calmly, but she gauged well, the supreme power she had over the man who had so abjectly shown her such inflammable love. She knew, too, of his vanity, and hit him caressingly on the spot. The cry of "he and none other," combined with a beseeching wail that he should open his heart to an affectionate and faithful love, was more likely to conquer than any admission of wrong. Could she forget the oft-repeated declaration that his ruling principle was that he would have no divided affection? It must be all or none. The hypothesis is therefore that she played on his vanity, and not on his confidence or judgment, the sequel being the complete surrender of Napoleon.

Josephine, whether from fear of the penalty or the purity of her motives, never again allowed herself to be placed in the same hazardous position. She had been cured of unfaithfulness, and promised that Hippolyte Charles should never be allowed to lead her into such a scrape again. He was put out of her life, and was never more heard of. He was seen but once more by Napoleon, and the sight of his evil face nearly caused the Emperor the humiliation of a collapse.

Josephine's matrimonial transgressions, whatever they may have been, were condoned with exuberant suddenness, and Napoleon rushed into domestic tranquillity. The zealot of freedom forthwith concentrated his wondrous talents with aggressive righteousness on the task of destroying a decadence that was bearing France to her doom. Josephine was enrolled as patron of deliverance from anarchy, and having all the essential attributes which make for success in such an enterprise, she daily filled her salon with men and women who had influence to aid her husband and his friends in upsetting the Government. She had developed into an attractive, graceful hostess, and was endowed with the knack of cajoling which disarmed opposition and enthused supporters, and unquestionably she played the part given to her with unmeasured success, and Napoleon did the rest.

The coup d'etat had been dexterously planned, which enabled him to bring about a bloodless overthrow. Josephine was deployed to win over her friend Gohier, the President of the Directory. She invited him and his wife to breakfast on the 17th Brumaire. Gohier wonders why they should be asked so early as six in the morning. He thinks he smells a rat, excuses himself, but sends his wife, who is ushered into the presence of a houseful of officers of the National Guard, and the hostess does not lose time in conveying to Gohier's former cook the meaning of their being there. Bonaparte, be it known, is determined to form a Government, and it grieves her that so good a friend as the President of Directors should have been so thoughtless of his own interests as not to accompany his wife on such an auspicious occasion.

"The inevitable is at hand, Madame Gohier," says Josephine in effect, "and at this very moment Barras is being pressed to resign, and if he disobeys his fate is sealed." Madame Gohier is aghast, stiffens her back, and with as much dignity as her nature will allow, she bows, withdraws, and hastens to the side of her husband, to convey all she has seen and heard.

Meanwhile, events travel swiftly under the direction of the intrepid General. He walks into the Council of Ancients and jerks out with vivid flashes of oratory the object of his visit. The members see at a glance its meaning. They become inarticulate with rage begotten of fear. He thunders out, "I am here to demand a Republic founded on true liberty," and swears that he will have it. In the Hall of the Five Hundred he is met with cries of "Down with the Cromwell!" "No Dictator!" "Outlaw him!" and so forth.

But these are mere futile belchings of exasperated gasbags, on whom he darts a look of withering scorn, which they discern means trouble if they do not conduct themselves with decorum. His guards are close at hand, and he is daring enough to make use of them if there is any resistance to that which he has undertaken. To the Directory, through their envoy Dottot, he says in substance, and not without vigour, "Do not sicken me with your imbecile arguments and lame, impotent conclusions. What I want to know is: What have you done with this France which I left you so glorious? I left you peace; I return and find war! I left you victories; I find reverses! I left you the millions of Italy; I find despoiling laws and misery throughout!" But ere this terrific indictment had been thrust at them, they had become conscious that their dissolute and chaotic regime was at an end, and that Napoleon had become the ruler of the France he had left prosperous and found tottering to pieces on his return from Egypt.

Josephine had played her part in the drama with surprising shrewdness and marked devotion to her husband's cause. He was rewarded by being made First Consul, and she by becoming the first lady of the Republic and the leader of society. They quickly availed themselves of the distinction by removing from their humble habitation, first to the Petit Luxembourg and then to the Tuileries, where she occupied the bedroom of the famous Marie Antoinette and the apartments formerly inhabited by Louis, which were immediately above. They gathered round them men of merit representing science, art, literature, law, politics, military notables, and fashion. They set up, in fact, a little Court, but lived a quiet, unostentatious life, so far as it was diplomatic and permissive.

It was not until the advent of the Empire that gaiety and grandeur began, excelling and putting into the shade every other Court in Europe. Josephine wallowed in it, but Napoleon adopted and encouraged it more from policy than taste. In fact, when in a whimsical mood, he often said it bored him. That is not to say that he did not adapt himself to what he believed was a necessity. An Oriental potentate could not have carried the dignity of splendour more naturally than he. Whilst in his secret heart he loathed its pomp and extravagance, fixed in his memory was the impression of poverty and suffering that he had passed through in his boyhood days, when, in the streets of Paris, he was on the verge of starvation and at one time obliged to sell his meagre possession of books to find food for the mouth of his brother Louis, and went without himself. To his intimate friends he was accustomed to relate the story, not in a whining manner, but with a vividness and pathos that brought tears to the eyes of every one who heard it.

The wilful and false conception of Napoleon's character that existed amongst thousands of those who were contemporary with him, and the persistent efforts to defame him, even now, by a section of the world's community, are extraordinary, when so many convincing proofs are available which show him to have been the reverse of what they say he was. As brother, son, husband, father, or friend, his love, devotion, and loyalty were matchless. He was never once known to upbraid Josephine after the condonement of her infidelities. He paid her colossal debts, not without protest, but rather than make her unhappy he excused her extravagance and overlooked the capricious, peevish way in which she gave her domestic confidences concerning himself to her friends, who were oft-times his enemies, and so forgiving was he of faults which were so glaring to others, that he frequently caressed when he should have chastised.

Josephine played upon his purblindness where she was concerned in most scandalous ways. She had no money sense, and combined with this defect she had no moral sense in money matters. Her debts were chronic, and periodically so enlarged that she adopted the most monstrous methods to reduce them before the balances were put before Napoleon by herself, or an inkling conveyed to him by a wily creditor; but these subterfuges only added to her spending resources. It is said that she actually did not shrink from receiving a thousand francs per day from Fouche as the price of information given him of what was going on in the Tuileries, and also that she received half a million francs from Flachats, the predatory army contractors.

It is unthinkable that Napoleon, whose rigid uprightness in matters of money has never been disputed, could have known that his wife was involved in such shocking financial dealings, or he would have taken salutary measures to put a definite end to them. He knew that he was surrounded by men who were inveterate thieves, and when their defalcations were brought to his knowledge, they were either cashiered or made to disgorge. Bourrienne, Talleyrand, and Fouche, for instance. But there is no evidence to show that he ever suspected Josephine at any time, and let us hope that the Fouche-Flachats transactions were either exaggerated or mere invention, though it is hard to believe that there was no truth in the accusation.

Napoleon was no sooner made Consul than there began to be hints and innuendoes of an heir, and as Josephine knew that she could not bear him one, she was thrown into fits of despondency lest he should be driven by designing persons in and outside his family to listen to a scheme of divorce and remarriage. The alternative was to nominate one of his brothers as his heir. Joseph and Lucien were impossible, so he fixed his mind on Louis. But the plot to assassinate him on the way to the opera, together with the Duc d'Enghien, Cadoudal, Moreau, and Pichegru affair, brought the change from Life Consul to Emperor more quickly. The marriage of Louis to Hortense eased Josephine's mind. She had in view the fact that an heir might be born to them, and the possibility of the inheritance going to him. In due course Napoleon Charles was born, and an attempt made by Napoleon to carry his idea out. Louis was at first in favour of it, but Joseph and Lucien had envious conceptions of what the brothers' rights were. Louis became impressed with their views, and ultimately decided against Napoleon's wishes. The Senate passed a resolution in favour of "direct natural, legitimate, and adoptive descendants of Napoleon Bonaparte, and on the direct, natural, legitimate descendants of Joseph and Louis." The plebiscite supported the resolution of the Senate, and Joseph and Louis had the mortification of seeing that to them the succession was barred.

This decision was regarded by Josephine as highly satisfactory to herself. She made no fuss about it, but was greatly overjoyed at the prospect of the effect it would have on Napoleon, and for a time no more was openly heard of divorce; but the venom was insidiously eating its way to that end all the same, and as he grew in power, so did the conspiracy develop. His own family were eager that she should be put away, but there were influences more powerful than that of Madame Mere and her sons and daughters. Talleyrand and Fouche being the High Commissioners who founded the direct hereditary idea, they persistently worried him with the plea that the State claimed that he should make the sacrifice. They knew that this was the strongest and most effective reason they could put forward to a man who would have given his soul in the service of his country.

The birth of Madame Eleonore Denuelle's son Leon on December 29, 1806, made a great impression on the Emperor's mind. It was well known that he was the father of the child, and now that there was no doubt as to the possibility of him having an heir, it was only to be expected that the advocates of divorce would press their claim that an alliance should be made with one of the powerful ruling families. The advantages to France would be inestimable, and would it not establish himself and his dynasty more firmly on the throne? It is not unlikely that Napoleon pondered over the great possibilities of such a marriage, but he could not bring himself to the thought of divorcing the woman he still loved. He went so far as to seek Josephine's support in the plan of making his natural son his heir, and Masson says that in support of his desire he vigorously used "precedents and invented justifications." Happily he did not stretch the law of hereditary succession further than this.

Leon, when he grew up, became a great source of trouble to all those with whom he was connected. His features and physical make up had a marked resemblance to his father's, but his mind was erratic. He had inherited none of the steady, sane genius of the Emperor, though but for a freak of nature which gave him a mental twist, he would have been as near his prototype as may be. He was always full of great schemes, which in the hands of a normally constituted person would have been fashioned into public usefulness.

Masson gives a vivid and somewhat categorical account of his predilections, which were "gambling, duels, politics, writing pamphlets, the conception of colossal canal, railway, and commercial undertakings that never got far beyond the initial and rocky mental stage." He was one of the chief mourners when his father's remains were brought to Paris from St. Helena in 1840, and in 1848 aspired to the Presidency of the Republic, which fell to the lot of his cousin Louis Napoleon, whose life he desired to take, but who, with great generosity, gave him a pension and paid the legacy left him by Napoleon. He died in 1881.

The birth of Leon gives him a prominent place in the history of the political divorce, though so far as Napoleon was concerned or affected by it, there is strong evidence to show that he really thought it was a way out, and had he been left to his own inclinations, the probability is that there would have been no second marriage so long as Josephine lived. From 1807 to 1809 his brain was racked to pieces with the inevitable shadow he struggled to evade. He could not bring himself to sever the tie that bound them together in strong attachment for nearly fifteen years. He invented every conceivable device to try and find a more congenial solution than divorce.

For two years the Emperor lived in an atmosphere of intolerable anguish which distracted him. The nearer he approached the dreaded theme, the more fascinating his wife appeared to him, and the more tenaciously he clung to the deep impressions that had been made by that youthful passion that swayed his very being in other days. She had frequently recaptured him from the subtle blandishments of an agency that was ever on his track, and then his devotion became more rapturous than ever. Fouche was frequently rebuked with stern severity for his pertinacious advocacy of the separation. At another time we hear of him falling into Josephine's arms, shedding copious tears, and, choking with grief, he sobs out, "My poor Josephine! I can never leave you," "I still love you," and so forth.

Those who pretend to see in these outbursts of devotion nothing but artifice, cannot have informed themselves of the true character of this extraordinary man. In truth, his was a sacrifice of affection forced upon him for the benefit of the State. That is the conclusion the writer has come to after much research. Even after he was persuaded that he would have to submit, the recollections of the glory they had shared together, and of their happy days, and the grief and suffering the parting would cause, filled him with remorse and pity, and then would come a period of wavering which exasperated his family and the upholders of the stability of the Empire. At last he saw clearly that it was an imperative duty that must be fulfilled.

The succession problem had been artfully revived, and the amiable Marie Walewska, who was living close to Schoenbrunn, was about to give birth to a child which he knew to be his, and it is not improbable that this double assurance that he might reasonably expect to have an heir if he married again brought him to the definite decision to go on with the divorce; and the Emperor Francis of Austria made haste to form an alliance by offering his daughter Marie Louise in marriage.

At the end of December, 1809, the great political divorce was ratified amid sombre signs of sympathy. Even the Bonapartes were compelled to yield to emotion, and Napoleon himself was profoundly affected. The subdued distress of Josephine pierced through the chilly hearts of those who had looked on with composure while men and women were being led to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. But even Josephine's tears and grief were graceful and fascinating, so that it was not surprising that the spectators extended sympathy to her in her sorrow. Almost immediately after the ceremony Napoleon became overcome with grief. He allowed a little time to elapse before asking Meneval to accompany him to Josephine's apartments. They found her in a condition of inexorable despair. She flung herself into the Emperor's arms; he embraced and fervently kissed her, but the ordeal was too great. She collapsed and fainted. He remained with her until she showed signs of consciousness, then left her in charge of Meneval and women attendants. The sight of her grief was too much for him to bear.

Napoleon sought a delusive diversion at Trianon after Josephine had taken up her abode at Malmaison. His sympathetic and affectionate attentions from there could not have been more earnestly shown. Nothing that would appease her grief and add to her comfort was overlooked by him or allowed to be overlooked by others. An annual income of three million francs was settled on her for life, which, should he pre-decease her, was to be paid by his successors. She retained the title of Empress and every other appearance of sovereignty.

The negotiations for the second marriage were conducted from Trianon. The Russian alliance fell through, ostensibly on religious grounds. Napoleon did not like the thought of having Russian priests about him, and besides, the Princess Anne was too young to marry, and even if there had been no other difficulty, the Emperor Napoleon could not wait. The Saxon alliance did not appeal to him, so he gave preference to the House of Austria, and on March 11, 1810, His Majesty was married by proxy at Vienna to the Austrian Archduchess, and on the 1st of April the civil marriage took place at St. Cloud, and the following day they were ecclesiastically united.[31]

Better for him and for France had he defied the advocates of royal alliance and stuck to Josephine, or even married Marie Walewska. If it was merely the policy of succession that was aimed at, he could have adopted his natural son, the brilliant Alexander Walewska, whose subsequent career in the service of France would have justified this course.

The desire to unite the French Emperor with one of the powerful reigning families in order to give stability to the Empire and put an end to incessant warfare was a theory which proved to be a delusion, and perhaps Napoleon, with his clear vision, foresaw the jealousies and international complications that would arise through a political marriage of this character. This, and his unwillingness to part with Josephine, is a conclusion that may reasonably account for the vacillation that was so pronounced from time to time.

The flippant attitude (which indicates the scope and summit of an ill-informed mind) that he was the victim of abnormal ambition to be connected with one or other of the royal families is ludicrous. If he had been eager to have such distinction, it was within his reach at any time after he became First Consul. He had only to impart a hint and there would have been a competition of available princesses, the choice of which would have bewildered him. Assuredly he showed no youthful impetuosity in this respect, and it may not be an overdrawn hypothesis to conclude that his marriage with Marie Louise was neither popular with the French people as a whole nor with other nationalities. It excited jealousy and mistrust amongst the larger Powers, and in France itself the memory of the last ill-fated union of France with Austria—that of Marie Antoinette and Louis—had left rankling effects in the minds of the people of the Revolution.[32]

Murat had urged on his brother-in-law and the grand dignitaries the fact that a marriage with a relative of Marie Antoinette, who was an abhorrence to the adherents of the Revolution, would alienate a large public, but Murat's objections were suspected of having personal colour and overruled. It is, however, beyond conjecture that the King of Naples had diagnosed aright; whether from self-interest or not, the warning proved accurate. The most loyal and devoted of his subjects felt that their invincible hero was drifting into a vortex of trouble. They had learned by bitter experience the duplicity of Austrian diplomacy. The remembrance of the cruel wars they had been cunningly trapped into, the bleached bones of Frenchmen that lay on Austrian soil, and the denuded homes that resulted from Austria's odious policy of greed, worked on them like a subtle poison. And the glory of their conquests over her was nullified by the eternal suspicion that she was ever hatching new grounds of quarrel. They thought, indeed, their premonition of Austria's perpetual treachery was clear and definite, and that the new Empress would be a useful medium of their enemies' machinations.

We can never fully estimate to what extent these impressions influenced their minds and actions and the part they played in hastening the great national humiliation. It is a pretty certain conclusion that it was only the colossal successes and magical personality of the Emperor that kept subdued the spirit of resentment which the marriage had caused.

And we have historic evidence before us which clearly shows that the well-balanced mind of Napoleon was torn and tattered between doubt and conviction, and he fell into the fatal error of allowing his judgment to be overruled either by circumstances or pride. Had he relied on his superstition even, the chances are that St. Helena would never have had the stigma of his captivity stamped upon it.

French and Austrian alliances have never, so far as they affected political history, been very successful. The stability of earthly things is governed, not by sentiment or theoretic doctrines, but by facts as hard as granite, and no one knew this more thoroughly than the man who fell a victim to the devices of the Austrians and their French allies.

He was usually reticent about his domestic sorrows while in exile, but when his thoughts were far off, reviewing the great mystery of human destiny, he broke the rule, and with a sort of languid frankness spoke the thoughts that crowded his mind, and it was during these spasmodic periods that he opened his soul by declaring that it was his "having married a princess of Austria that ruined him, and that his marriage with Marie Louise was the cause of the expedition into Russia," and that "he might not have been at St. Helena had he married a Frenchwoman." It is said that he seriously thought of doing this, and had some available ladies put before him with that object. These dreamy utterances reveal that his mind was centred on the causes of his misfortunes, and that he held definite views on the marriage tragedy, and perhaps his sense of pride, the interests of his son (the King of Rome), and the reluctance to admit that he knew he was going wrong at the time, constrained him to withhold much that he thought and knew. The impression we get is that he could not bring himself to utter the whole of the unutterable canker which haunted him.

It is strange that this keen-sighted man should have yielded up his own convictions and sunk under the admonitions of less capable judges. Even so far back as the Directory days, when Bernadotte was insulted at Vienna, he summed up the Austrian character in the following terms:—"When the Austrians think of making war, they do not insult; they cajole and flatter the enemy, so that they may have a better chance to stick a knife into him." He told the Directory they did not understand the Cabinet of Vienna; "it is the meanest and most perfidious to be found." "It will not make war with you because it cannot." "Peace with Austria is only a truce." His diagnoses were confirmed by Bernadotte, and more than confirmed in after years. The marvel is that he did not allow himself to benefit by his shrewd observations at a moment when so much depended on strength, not vacillation and weakness.

A vivid justification of the opposition to another Austrian princess sharing the throne of France is embodied in the lofty ideals (?) of the Emperor Francis to his daughter Marie Louise at Schoenbrunn after she had deserted Napoleon. He said to her:—"As my daughter, all that I have is yours, even my blood and my life; as a sovereign, I do not know you."

The benediction, pure and big of heart, benignly expressed, is promptly qualified with kingly sternness; the orthodoxy being that so long as Napoleon was in power she was his daughter, all that he had was hers, including his life and blood, but now that he has fallen she must not thwart his wishes, and loyally share the fate of him who was the father of her son, who had given her unparalleled glory, and been so merciful to Francis himself. If she elected to be at all wifely and cling to her husband in his misfortune, then he would assert the sovereign, and as readily gore her as he would Napoleon if, in his patriarchal wisdom, he judged national interests were at stake. His spirit-crushing rhetoric had a real ultra-monarchical ring about it. But it was meant for other ears and a purpose other than that of making his daughter shudder. So far as she was concerned, he might have saved himself any anxiety on that score. She bowed her head in conformity, and swiftly cast her amorous eyes on Neipperg, a man after his and her own heart. This was the culminating event that brought her destiny with Napoleon to an end, though he tried to avert it, and the causes are summarised in his own pathetic language, clearly expressed from time to time.

His nephew, Napoleon III., taking a lesson from his folly, refused to be buffeted into political matrimony by any of the matchmaking factions. When his turn came he acted with independence and wisdom by ignoring the blandishments of meddling advisers and royal conventionalism, and elected to marry the lady on whom he had set his affections.

Incidentally, it may be stated that Napoleon III.'s merits have been overshadowed by the greater genius of his uncle, but as time separates the reigns of the two men it will be realised that, though he was not looked upon as a great military general, he had genius of a different kind, and was unquestionably a great ruler, acting under somewhat changed conditions, but subject to the same human caprices, and a time will come when the benefits he bestowed upon the French nation will be appreciated more than they are this day.

In 1812, Europe was in a state of dammed convulsion. The wars, though always successful for France, had brought about no definite settlement of international affairs. Peace was transitory, and the dread of Napoleon's power and genius was the only check on rapacious designs on his dominion.

What direct or indirect share Marie Louise had in bringing about the war with Russia and then the great European struggle will never be wholly known, but as the wife of Napoleon she would have opportunities of hearing from himself and those who were in his confidence remarks and even discussions on the complexities of the political situation. She was in daily communication with Metternich, and constantly corresponding with her father; and even allowing that her intentions were loyal at that time to her husband and to the country of her adoption, she may have unconsciously conveyed something that in the hands of adroit diplomats would reveal the pivot on which great issues might depend. Then, placing the Regency in her hands was an unchecked temptation, and must be counted as one of Napoleon's great mistakes. Imbued with an abundant share of Austrian predilection, and occupying a mechanical or fictitious position towards France and its ruler, and in view of her subsequent conduct, it is a reasonable assumption that during the Regency she conveyed important information of military movements and intentions to the Austrian Court, which it was not slow to take advantage of; and if truth were told, it would be found that the Allies owed much of their success to the Austrian Archduchess. May it not have been part of the subtle policy of Austria in arranging the marriage? Everything certainly points to it.

Instead of making Metternich a present at the Prague Congress of a snuff-box which cost 30,000 francs, as a token of friendship, Fouche, who always had his mind well stored with ideas of corruption, suggested to the Emperor that, if it was intended to buy Austria off, he ought to make it millions. If Napoleon had been a man after his own heart, this might have been a successful solution for a time, but only for a time. Meneval says that the Emperor, who had a horror of corruption, replied to him with a gesture of disgust.

In the early part of 1812, when war with Russia had become imminent, Napoleon carried out a promise that Josephine should see the King of Rome. The meeting took place at Bagatelle. She hugged and kissed the child with motherly affection, and her tears flowed with profusion. The scene was touching, and proved to be the everlasting farewell. Strange as it may appear, Josephine formed an enduring affection for Napoleon's natural son, afterwards Count Colonna (Alexander Walewska), and for his mother, Marie Walewska. She loved the child and treated him with the same indulgence as she did her own grandchildren. The mother was a regular visitor, and no one was more welcome at Malmaison than she. These incidents of magnanimity, characteristic of Josephine, would make her not only attractive but lovable, were it not there are also left on record flaws which show that she was seriously lacking in probity and fidelity to him to whom she owed everything. Her maternal affection and loving care of her children are without reproach, and her generosity to worthy and unworthy people was extraordinary. She loved Napoleon with peculiar eccentricity. His honour and interests were never a consideration. She allowed herself to be surrounded at Malmaison during the Russian campaign with Royalist plotters and treachery of the most implacable character. She poured out her woes to them with acceptable results, and nothing that would damage him and draw sympathy to herself was left uncommunicated. Her whole thought was of herself. She did not intend to be false or cruel to him, and yet she was both cruel and false.

As soon as the Allied Armies had taken possession of Paris, the irrepressible Madame de Stael made a call on Josephine to ascertain how she stood now towards her former husband. She promptly asked her whether she still loved him. Josephine resented the impertinence, so the Duchesse de Reggio relates, and told some of her visitors that she had never ceased to love the Emperor in the days of his prosperity, and it was unthinkable that she should cease to do so in his adversity. Unhappily for Josephine, she adopted a most astounding course of showing her devotion by agreeing to the visits, first, of the Emperor of Russia, and then the other sovereigns and foreign dignitaries. She gave balls and treated the enemies of France, and especially the Tsar, as though they were the real descendants of the builders of the Temple to Jehovah. She and Hortense walked about the grounds linked to Alexander's arms during frequent visits, which was indicative of strongly formed affection.

Had Josephine been possessed of a grain of discernment or a proper estimate of her dignity, she would have seen that this was part of a well-defined policy of striking a blow through her at the man she professed to love still, even with a greater passion now that he was the victim of combined and unrelenting hostility. Hortense, it would appear, refused at first to have any dealings with Alexander, but this sovereign's personal charms, winning manners, and homely ways soon fascinated and captured her. She may be excused, but her mother did not act the part of a nobleminded woman, and her memory must bear the reproach of it.

Apart from the respect she owed to herself, she should have remembered the duty and loyalty she owed to a vast French public, and to the victim of her guests, who had been to her the most forgiving, indulgent friend that ever a human soul was blessed with. He had been a father to her children, and even when he was overwhelmed with the consequences of great disaster, his tenderest and most generous thoughts were sent to her.

A woman who had a high sense of duty and honour would not have accepted a single favour from either one or the other of the inimical sovereigns, even if it had been offered to her; much less would she have cringed and whined indelicately in order that she might receive either their smiles or their favours at so abhorrent a price.

Some writers have endeavoured to give Josephine credit for having influenced Alexander in a way that secured for Napoleon better terms than he would have otherwise got at the first abdication. The suggestion is ludicrous. Presumably the alternative was that he should be shot or confined in a fortress for the balance of his life. Either of these ideas of disposing of his person would have created reaction and public vengeance. The Allies shied at this, though some of the most ferocious, but by no means the bravest, of the set clamoured for shooting, which is always the way with spurious heroes.

The diplomats amongst them devised the more subtle plan of exiling him first to Elba with the title of Emperor, and a pension of L200,000 per annum, never a penny of which was paid, or, in the light of history, was ever intended to be paid.

They had preconceived the notion of masking the St. Helena plan until they thought they had cheated the public into believing that they were inspired by humane motives and the necessity for the peace of Europe. They laboriously studied out the most ingenious plots so that they might be glorified for ridding Europe of a "monster."

Napoleon was kept advised, during his stay at Elba, of their designs on the liberty they had graciously (?) given him (with a pension that was designedly withheld), and, acting on certain specific information, he promptly developed one of his most brilliant achievements—the sudden landing in France, his triumphal march to Paris, and the resultant flight of the Bourbons at his unexpected approach at the head of an enthusiastic army.

The campaign which followed—ending with the Battle of Waterloo—enabled the Allies, after his defeat, to satisfy the cravings of their savage instincts by carrying out their plan as mentioned above and sending him to martyrdom.

But one of their most brutal acts was in refusing the request that his wife and child should accompany him to Elba. These are the ultimate "better terms" that Josephine is said to have secured by coquetting with Alexander of Russia!

She revelled in grasping at every fragment of wreckage that would be of advantage to herself and her family, and Alexander's crafty friendship unquestionably gave her opportunities to indulge unchecked in complaints of her grievances against the man who had been so foully betrayed. Her mania for the distribution of confidences of the most sacred character was only equalled by her capacity for intriguing and piling up debts, and these attributes never forsook her at any time.

Josephine's moral qualities cannot be accurately judged by her frequent outpourings of admiration and affection for Napoleon to Eugene and Hortense. In the letters to each which are extant, she declares it would be impossible for anyone to be kinder, more amiable, or considerate than he has always been, and even after the divorce she writes that if she loved him less sincerely, he could not show more anxiety to mitigate anything that might be painful to her.

But notwithstanding these declarations, she never failed to gratify her insatiable love of pouring forth to his most inveterate enemies faults and failings that her constitutional moral obliquity indicated he had. It is not an unfair assumption, therefore, that their Majesties and others had conveyed to them in handfuls (unwittingly perhaps) much that was valuable to their pernicious purpose while they were being entertained at Malmaison. It has been said that it was her intention to be presented to the Bourbon King, and though we would fain believe her to be incapable of such perfidy, it is quite in keeping with the by-ways of her complex character, more especially as Eugene had paid him a visit. The promises of the sovereigns that the interests of herself and children would be protected became less reassuring as the few days that were left to her went on. At last she realised they were mere silken verbiage, and gave way to despair. This, and the anxiety of entertaining her royal guests, accentuated the illness she had contracted. Alexander paid his first visit on May 14th, and she died of quinsy or diphtheria on May 29, 1814.

The allied monarchs were all represented at her funeral, and the Prince of Mecklenburg (the Queen of Prussia's brother) was amongst the mourners. It was of him the Court gossipers assiduously circulated reports that he was paying suspicious attention to Josephine after the divorce. Napoleon, on hearing of the flirtation through Fouche, rebuked her with justifiable vigour on the ground of it being a gross violation of dignity to go about with the Prince and others of lower ranks to second-rate theatres, even under the cover of incognito. He does not appear to have thought there was anything more than Josephine's habitual lack of respect for herself and the high position he had preserved for her, though according to the unreliable Madame de Remusat Napoleon suggested to his divorced wife that she should take Prince Mecklenburg as her husband. The same authority (?) asserts that the Prince had written to Napoleon asking his permission, and, further, says that Josephine told her this curious story. It is entirely unsupported by either the words or actions of the Emperor himself, and may be put aside as another of the fabrications of the memoir writer.

That there was a flirtation there can be little doubt, but the Prince's object may have been part of the political intrigue, rather than carnal intercourse with a woman of nearly fifty years of age. Josephine, always sorry for herself, a sieve of the first water, susceptible to flattery, blind to device, yearning for admiration and pity, was rejoiced to find attention extended to her from any quarter, but coming from the Royal House of Prussia or any other royal personage it was a dazzling compliment to the high esteem in which she believed she was held, and enhanced the luxury of feeling that she was the centre of international sympathy.

It was not that she had any malicious intent to do deliberate wrong to Napoleon, or any thought of degrading herself. Her mind did not work in these grooves. She was merely carried off her feet by vain love of self-approbation, which led her far beyond the bounds of honourable prudence. She was interred at Rueil amidst quiet solemnity, and in 1825 Eugene and Hortense erected a monument in her memory.

The legend is that her last articulate utterance was the enchanted name of "Napoleon"—"Elba." Corvisat, the Imperial physician, was piteously asked by the Emperor on his return why he allowed her to die, and the nature of the malady that took her spirit away. He replied that she "Died of grief and sorrow." Her own doctor, Horeau, told him pretty much the same thing, which brought forth the sad reply, she was a "good woman" and "loved me well." The intimation that she had spoken often and kindly of him brought back all the old passion for her and filled him with emotion. He had heard of her death while at Elba, and told Corvisat that it was a most acute grief to him, and although she had her failings she at least would "never have abandoned him"; and possibly this latter expressed opinion, so often repeated, might have been fulfilled had he at once thrown Marie Louise over after her desertion of him.

The popular charges against Napoleon, by those who are either prejudiced or have failed to inform themselves of his history, are that he must have been a cruel and barbarous husband or he would not have divorced his wife, and that, as a ruler, he thirsted for blood. Each of these, as well as many other silly things that are said and believed of him, is palpably false. As a husband, so far as kindness and indulgence goes, he was exemplary. As a soldier, First Consul, and Emperor, his desire at all times was for peace. History has revealed the real man, and in recent years it has been convincingly proved that he was the very antithesis of the monster he has been given out and supposed to be. Now, in the light of more accurate knowledge and calmer judgment, the world is showing a desire to do him the justice he never ceased to believe that it would do him.

His unexampled personality and fame is spreading and inspiring everywhere. His faults are being put in the limelight of public opinion, and the growing desire to treat even these with proper generosity is an indication that reason and knowledge are taking the place of stereotyped international prejudice, political and personal. We are beginning to see more clearly through the fog of enmity that he had rare virtues, besides having unparalleled genius. The divorce of Josephine was unquestionably political, though had he been the ferocious creature he has been made to appear, the opportunities she gave him so frequently would have justified the divorce at a much earlier stage on other than political grounds.

It ill becomes a nation which knew George I., George IV., and Henry VIII. to take such unctuous exception to the gentle and benevolent attitude of Napoleon before and after the annulment of the marriage.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] It has been asserted that when Josephine found the divorce to be inevitable she herself suggested the alliance with Marie Louise. One reason for believing that this might be the case lies in the fact that the affection of Josephine's children for Napoleon suffered no diminution on account of the divorce—indeed, Eugene took a leading part in the negotiations for the marriage.

[32] In the notorious "Letters from the Cape," addressed to Lady Clavering and variously attributed to an Englishman, Las Cases, and even Napoleon himself, there is noted a curious coincidence with regard to the two Franco-Austrian alliances. Both marriage contracts were signed under somewhat similar circumstances, and in both cases fetes were held in honour of the event. At the marriage fete of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette a calamity occurred which resulted in the loss of about two thousand lives. To celebrate the union of Napoleon and Marie Louise, Prince Schwartzenberg gave a fete, at which a fire occurred, the Prince's wife and some twenty other people being burnt to death. The superstitious drew attention to the coincidence, and it is said that Napoleon looked upon it as an evil omen.



CHAPTER VII

RELIGIOUS NOTIONS OF NAPOLEON

In contrast with members of the oligarchy, who threw all moral restraints to the winds, Napoleon towers above them. Take any grounds—administrative, strategical, religious, domestic—he was preeminent above his contemporaries. On religious grounds alone, those thoughts of his which have been recorded not only disclose the insight of a man of affairs, but reveal the thinking mind of a deeply religious being. His conversations with Gourgaud on religious subjects, some of which are quoted in Lord Rosebery's admirable book, "The Last Phase," are so contradictory that they cannot be taken as authentic beliefs. It greatly depended to whom he was talking as to the line he took.

It is evident that the Emperor took a delight in arguing with and contradicting the devout Catholic for sheer intellectual exercise. At one time he declares to his refractory companion, "If I had to choose a religion, I would worship the sun, because the sun gives to all things life and fertility." At another time he torments the Count, after tying him into a knot and exposing his superficial knowledge, by saying that "the Mohammedan religion is the finest of all." But when his mind seriously dwells on sacred things, he declares "that religion lends sanctity to everything." "The remission of sins is a beautiful idea." "It makes the Christian religion so attractive that it will never perish. No one can say 'I do not believe and I never shall believe.'"

Montholon is more to the writer's liking than Gourgaud, even though Gourgaud's authenticity is backed by Lord Rosebery, and we shall see later what he says about his Emperor's religious beliefs. It was he who endeavoured to mitigate his master's mental and physical sufferings, and it was he whom he desired should close his eyes in death when the nefarious assassination had been completed. It was he, too, who got himself locked up in the fortress of Ham for seven years by adhering steadfastly to the cause of the great exile's nephew. Gourgaud was loyal and devoted on a sort of sliding scale, which led him to do great injustice to the stricken hero. Montholon's devotion was consistent and abiding under all circumstances, while Gourgaud's fluctuated with his moods.

None of Napoleon's companions in exile were admitted to such close intimacy with the illustrious warrior-statesman as was Count Montholon, not even Bertrand or Marchand. It was he who had won confidence by the most amazing attachment that one human being could give to another, and it was natural that the big soul of Napoleon should respond to what amounted to fanatical fidelity. He was the beloved companion of the Emperor for six years, and during the last forty-two nights of his life he was with him in the death-chamber, and at his request he kept vigil and witnessed, his spirit pass away.

It was to him, when the shadow of death was hovering round the smitten rock, that Napoleon conveyed his most sacred thoughts, domestic, civil, and religious. He made him one of his executors, bequeathed to him a fortune, entrusted him with the custody of precious documents, and to his dying day the recipient of such flattering confidences never betrayed by word or act the faith that was reposed in him, nor did he ever falter in his devotion to the martyr's cause. It is from him we have handed down the famous constitution drawn up by Napoleon for his son, which is pregnant with democratic wisdom and flows with the genius of statesmanship. We get, too, a vivid knowledge of the religious side of Napoleon's versatile character. His talks and dictations on this controversial subject are unorthodox if you like, but nevertheless religious; copious in thought and trenchant in vocabulary, they disclose the magic of a well-stored inspired mind. He indulges in neither puerilities nor conventionalities. He is a vigorous student of the Bible and the Koran; he knows his subject, and speaks his reasonings without reservation, and in the end we see the vision of the omnipotent God fixed in an enduring belief.

In the first clause of his will he declares: "I die in the Apostolic Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years since." If any other proof were needed that he believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ, this avowed declaration on the eve of the great transformation may be confirmed by the fact that the cardinal doctrine of the Roman religion centres in the divinity of Christ. Again, in the course of his public and private duties, you frequently come across passages in his letters and official documents such as "May God have you in His holy keeping." It may be said that this is a mere form or figure of speech but then unbelievers do not use such phrases.

We find in everyday life a lack of courage to do justice and be generous to one another. But surely, in the interest of political, historical, and personal rectitude, the dying man's message to the world should absolve him from having his lucid, succinct conversations jargoned into a tattered tedium. It is either a perversion of understanding or a misanthropic egoism that can twist Napoleon's discourses on religious topics into meaning that he ever was seriously thinking of giving preference to the worship of the sun, or contemplating becoming a follower of Mohammed, or that he ever showed real evidences of being an unbeliever in the God of his race.

He praised many of the virtues of the Mohammedan religion, such as honesty, cleanliness, temperance, and devoutness, and denounced with scathing sarcasm, not Christ, but professing Christians whose conduct towards himself was beneath the dignity of the pagan. But this in no way detracts from his admiration of the genuine follower of Christ. He says that "religious ideas have more influence than certain narrow-minded philosophers are willing to believe; they are capable of rendering great services to humanity." Again, he says that "the Christian religion is the religion of a civilised people; it is entirely spiritual, and the reward which Jesus Christ promises to the elect is that they shall see God face to face; and its whole tendency is to subdue the passions; it offers nothing to excite them."