by Emil Ludwig
The Wooing
have not all the beauties, invariably come to him at his slightest nod of invitation ? The more enchanting, therefore, is this lady who shrinks back so virginally from the unveiled desire of a man.
" Have I displeased you ? I hoped the opposite. Or has your first feeling vanished ? My passion grows. You rob me of my rest. Vouchsafe a little joy, a little happiness, to the poor heart that would fain worship you ! Is it so hard to give me an answer ? You now owe me two." This second letter is unsigned. Suppose an amateur of such matters to come across it in a collection of love letters, would he dream of ascribing its authorship to Napoleon ? Neither heavy nor dictatorial, neither emotional nor stilted, but romantic rather is the tone. Nevertheless, since worldly convention demands that she should pay no heed to his suit, again his missive remains unanswered. Terrible the position of the adjutant who for the second time has failed in the carrying out a movement ordered by his chief. The Emperor, controlling his passion, thinks :
" If neither my pleading nor my rank has any effect on this tender creature, I must try to gain my end by a half-promise, which I need not regard as binding." He writes : " There are moments in life when high position is a heavy burden. That is borne in on me at this moment. ... If only you would! None but you can overcome the obstacles which separate us. My friend Duroc will do what he can to make it easy for you. Oh, come, come ! All your wishes shall be fulfilled ! Your country will be even dearer to me, if you have compassion on my heart. N."
Now we should recognise his wonted style, even without the capital N. Nevertheless, how amazingly the loneliness of the man of might breathes from these lines. The third love-letter is intelligently composed, and therefore achieves its purpose— but it discloses to us the tragical mask of destiny, the destiny of one who wishes to walk along the course he has planned for himself, and who is sacrificing his human happiness to this
A Lonely Man
heroical monomania. He roams through the splendid palace, arms locked behind. For weeks his mood has been one of yearning, but always he has been alone. For months he has hardly been near a woman. Now, having fallen passionately in love, storm-tost, he dismisses his secretaries, will not discuss matters with his generals, refuses to admit deputations, will not go out riding. The whole mechanism he has constructed is stationary. The palace, the army, Paris, Europe—let them wait. He, more a slave than any other, refuses to-day to obey the nature of things ; a man of thirty-seven whose wife, well past forty, no longer stirs his passion. Profoundly moved by a girl, twice rebuffed, he must devise lures from his other realms, must tempt her with the freedom of her country, in order that, after nearly a decade of quiescent feeling, he may spread upon the shoulders of a young woman the mantle of his yearning for tranquillity.
She, alarmed at the assault of this virile will, sits the same afternoon among her friends and relatives who are urging the sacrifice upon her, for Poland's sake. In this mood, she at length goes to see him. The three evening hours she spends with him are spent in tears. By gentle arts he restores her to calm, and to her astonishment she finds that this dreaded man of iron is a tender wooer.
" Marie, sweet Marie, my first thought is yours ! " she reads next morning. "I shall see you at dinner. I pledge you my word. Please wear the nosegay that I send; it will be a secret messenger of our feelings amid the crowd; thus we shall understand one another. If I lay my hand on my heart, you will know that it is wholly yours ; for answer, press your flowers to your bosom. Love me, my charming Marie; do not take your hand away from the flowers."
Not until three days later does she become his. Then she comes to see him every evening. But, as well as this, she must be present at every reception, for otherwise he stays away. What is she to him ? The second creature in the world who asks
Revanche !
nothing from him ; his mother was the first. Never has he known another woman who did not expect his magician's hand to shower on her the treasures of the universe : jewels, palaces, crowns, money. This woman wants nothing from him, and gives him everything. Countess Walewska is the quiet and loving companion whom Napoleon's stormy soul has sought. It will be long before he will be willing to part from her. " She is an angel. It may justly be said that her spirit is as lovely as her features."
Josephine wants to come ? Now ? He smiles. Since the Cairo days, Bonaparte has never had a mistress while campaigning, whereas his generals have had plenty of love-affairs. There can be no doubt that the story of this intrigue, distorted of course, will quickly be carried to Paris, and in a veiled form will find a way to Josephine's ears. She is waiting there, waiting to be summoned to his side. Now, in the most graceful way in the world, he deceived the wife who had deceived him for years. The weather, the roads, the public insecurity, made it impossible. " How gladly should I be spending the long winter nights at your side. ... If you are always weeping, then you lack courage and character. I cannot endure cowardly people. An empress must have courage ! "
Now he betrays her. " I laughed when you wrote to me that you had taken a husband in order to be with him. In my simplicity, I had believed that woman was made for man ; man for country, family, fame. Forgive my ignorance. One can always learn something from lovely women. . . . Besides, I could not think of any lady with whom I was exchanging letters. If there really were one, I can assure you she would have to be as beautiful as a newly opened rose. Does that apply to the lady of whom you speak ? "
See how this ambiguous trifling amuses him. His heart is so light sometimes. He can play the gallant as if there had never been a revolution in the world. When, after a few weeks, he
Russian Omens
resumes a campaigner's life, his farewell to his Polish inamorata is an au revoir.
Now Russia is open to him for the first time, a land like the desert. Endless steppes, covered with snow or mud ; no bread, and hardly any roads. After a few skirmishes, the tsar slowly retreats. Can we follow him ? Whither is he enticing us ? Who will feed the army ? There is nothing in this land to be seized, nothing such as there is in prosperous Germany, no storehouses. Had not a few hundred Polish Jews, shrewd speculators, seen the chance of striking good bargains, the regiments would have perished, at this early date, in the year 1807. When the Emperor, whose carriage has perforce been left behind, is riding towards Pultusk, he hears murmurs from the ranks. This is a sound he has almost forgotten ; he heard it for the first and last time eight years ago at Acre. His generals report suicides among the men. Thousands of starving soldiers desert, to become marauders. The Emperor is dumbfounded at the news, but what can he do ? "I know my Frenchmen," he says. " It is difficult to march them on distant expeditions. France is too beautiful."
It is not surprising, therefore, that when he compels the Russians to fight, for the first time he should fail to conquer in the open field. He is not actually beaten at Eylau, but both the contending armies sustain terrible losses, and the issue is indecisive. A first warning not to campaign against Russia! Report after the battle: the soldiers are rifling the potato clamps for food, and the horses are tearing straw from the roofs. The whole countryside is filled with invalided soldiers, and none of the colonels know how many men are left in their commands. The Emperor speaks :
" We shall stay here a couple of days more, and then withdraw a few miles. Post guards on all the bridges over the Vistula ; no one must be allowed to cross, except the amputated. Don't bother about stragglers; no punishments." But these signs
Finckenstein
of the disintegration of his army trouble him more than in former days. A cramp of the stomach, from which he has already suffered at times, becomes more frequent, and he says : " I bear within me the germs of an early death, and shall die of the same trouble as my father." Cancer is the family heritage : his grandfather, his father, his uncle, Lucien, and Caroline, all perished of this disease.
He writes to his brother: " We are living here amid snow and mud, without wine, bread, or brandy." But this is a private
missive. From Osterode, where he is housed in a barn among the soldiers, and eats whatever they can shark up for him (a comrade among his men, as he had been years before in Italy), his bulletins to Paris speak of a great victory, and of a Russian rout. The casualties are stated at a third of the true figures. The French army is in fine case, and can stay where it is for a year if thought best.
For the second time he must learn that his nerves are not made for waiting. Here, as in Egypt, this commander finds that there is something uncanny about standing still. Only once more in the whole course of his fifteen years as a conqueror will there be another such pause of two or three months in a place far from Paris. Both these epochs of tedious consideration, cautious negotiation, are filled out in the interludes of work by giving free rein to his pent-up emotions. They are filled out with idylls.
Finckenstein, a fortified Prussian castle, is now the scene of his activities, while he is awaiting the thaw on the roads and in the hearts of his adversaries. There are huge fireplaces, which are a delight to him, " for I love to look into the fire at night when I can't sleep." The place is roomy enough to house the envoys and couriers. For ten weeks, the world is ruled from here. In the great bedroom upstairs, he has had his iron camp-bed set up beside the huge four-poster.
No one knows that the Polish countess occupies the next room— or hardly any one except Constant, his valet, and
A Secret Idyll
Rustam, the Mameluke. She rarely goes out, and then only after dark. The time is passed in embroidery, reading, and waiting, until the door opens, and he enters, to devote himself to her for a time. He has his meals with her alone. In these two rooms are the commander's headquarters, and here the Emperor has enshrined his idyll. There are no dynastic wishes to trouble him as in Paris, no jealousies, and no bargainings for jewels ; there is no wish to shine ; nothing but the desire to remain hidden from the world, a wordless wish in the eyes of this sweet girl of eighteen who has learned to love him.
" I know," he says to her, " you would rather live without me. Yes, yes, don't protest; I know it ! But you are good and gentle ; your heart is pure. You don't want to rob me of the few hours of happiness which you can give me every day ? To think that people regard me as the happiest of men! "
A dispatch comes to tell him that his nephew and heir, the son of King Louis, is dead. How the news affects him is shown by his moving words to Josephine ; but he cannot tell his wife all the thoughts that now enter his mind at Finckenstein. That little cocotte in Cairo, what he had really hoped from her was a son. How if this beautiful woman, this noblewoman whom he loves, were to give him an heir ? Would he then make her his empress ? Why not ? He looks at Walewska, but keeps his own counsel.
What is Paris saying ?
With ear attent, he listens to the rumours that reach him across the Polish steppe. The funds are falling. Malicious jests are current on the boulevards. " Where are our brave lads ? " ask the Parisians. Caution is needed ! What begins as a gentle shower, may turn into a raging storm ; and the man who knows how to control the thunder is far away. He offers the beaten Prussians a separate peace, and even proposes a conference, but Queen Louise holds firmly to the alliance with the tsar. Austria, too, is deaf to his voice.
Despite all, here and now, with enemies to right and to left
Messengers From the East
of him, and without any firm standing-ground, he begins to dream once more of the conquests of Alexander. Messengers bearing heavily sealed letters ride forth from the courtyard of Finckenstein; strangers bringing dispatches arrive from remote lands and make their way to him across distant mountains. To this northern headquarters comes a Persian envoy, and the messenger of the King of Kings reverently bows his head to greet the sublime Emperor of the West. Next day, Napoleon and the Persian emissary come to an understanding. The Emperor will force the tsar to give back Georgia to the shah. In return, the shah will spur on the Afghans and the tribes of Kandahar to attack the English in India ; he will equip an army for the invasion of Hindustan. If the Emperor wishes to send an army against India, his men shall have free passage across Persia.
Hardly has the Persian departed, when a gorgeously attired Turk rides in past the astonished sentries, bringing golden gifts and a dispatch. A bespectacled oriental expert translates it. Standing in front of the fire, the Emperor, having reduced the eastern bombast to sober proportions, dictates a letter to the sultan : "I regret very much that you ask for no more than five hundred men instead of several thousand. . . . State your demands clearly, and whatever you want shall be instantly done. Get into communication with the shah of Persia, for he, too, is an enemy of the Russians. ... I offered your envoy the artillerymen and other soldiers you need, but he would not accept them, being afraid of hurting Mohammedan susceptibilities. I am so powerful, and I am so desirous for your victory (I wish this because of my friendship for you, and not on political grounds alone), that I can deny you nothing."
The same day, he writes to Brother Louis, who has been sending urgent appeals from his new kingdom, a letter which may be regarded as a sort of general instruction for kings, and which occupies five pages of print. He also sends orders to Joseph, as to the latter's conduct in Naples. To Jerome, who in Breslau is commanding a corps of pretty actresses instead of his
Ruling From Afar
soldiers, Napoleon writes to ask why his brother never sends complete reports, and why he has left six hundred men in Schweidnitz, four hundred in Brieg. " Let me know your exact plans, down to the smallest details, so that I can form an accurate picture of your situation." He likewise sends a missive to all the bishops in France. They are to institute a public thanksgiving for the Emperor's victories; but he aims, also, at exercising personal influence on each of his episcopal correspondents, for he has learned that the dispute between himself and the pope is making the ecclesiastics more and more uneasy in their consciences. Meanwhile he sends a dozen orders to Fouche: concerning Madame de Stael, and the extent of her influence; concerning the salons of the aristocratic quarter; and so on. He enquires about the two leading Parisian theatres ; their condition, their finances, and their repertoire. " What has become of my librarian ? " he asks in another letter. " Is he dead, or enjoying himself in the country ? That would be a fine way of fulfilling his duties ! I ordered him to send me all newly published books, and to let me have the publishers' announcement lists, but I have not had a word from him." Draft for a new historical university, where young people may learn about modern happenings as well as the story of ancient days. To the Minister for Home Affairs : " Literature needs encouragement. Let me hear your proposals for livening up the various forms of belles lettres." Enquiries as to the building of a new Stock Exchange and of the Madeleine. How can six millions be best applied for the encouragement of manufactures, and what will be the best way of raising the money ? Two millions are to be spent in renovating his palaces. Arrangements must be made for the Paris newspapers to publish articles ostensibly based on information from Bucharest and Tiflis, and describing Russia's desperate situation.
He smiles, glancing at his demure little friend. " You marvel at my manifold activities ? I have to keep watch on all my posts. Before, I was only an acorn. Now I am an oak, the ruler of
Marie's Posy Ring
nations. All eyes are fixed on me because I am in so outstanding a position. A man must play his part, and cannot always be natural. But, for you, I will become the acorn once more." Simple words, tranquilly uttered. One more evening with her, and then he must take the field again, for May has come, and the idyll ends with the leaving of winter quarters and the extinction of the fires at Finckenstein. He will see her again. They are both sure of this. But were he to forget her, he could read the posy in the ring she gives him : "
If you cease to love me, forget not that I love you."
XV
On the Memel, where it flows past Tilsit, a huge raft is anchored in mid-stream. The tree trunks and the planks are covered with carpet
s, and in the centre a tent gleams in the June sunlight, with the colours of France and of Russia flying above it. On the western and the eastern banks are ranged the guards of the two emperors. Boats set out from either shore. Napoleon and the tsar enter the peace-tent simultaneously. The soldiers, who were shooting one another only ten days back, cheer lustily, and those in front, who can see, pass the word to the thousands in the rear. The foes of yesterday have embraced, their masters have made friends.
Immediately after the great victory of Friedland, Napoleon, as was his way, had offered his hand to the vanquished. At the opening parleys, since the appropriate response had not been made by the sultan, he had given a hint that the tsar might well hope, some day, to establish the cross once more on the dome of St. Sophia. The words were carefully chosen, for he knew that the man to whom they would be reported next day, a romanticist and a mystic, would be amenable to their influence. Alexander had been prompt to take the proffered hand of friendship. Now the enemies of Austerlitz and Friedland stood face to face in amicable converse. Napoleon coldly scrutinised
Tsar Alexander
his only serious rival on the Continent, a young man with feminine lineaments, compact, delicately moulded, rosy; hearing and eyesight rather weak. In an instant he felt assured that the tsar was a man whom he could win over.
By the end of a fortnight, the sometime adversaries have not merely entered into an alliance, but have made friends. How has this come about ?
" He is an amiable and pleasant fellow, a hero of romance," says Napoleon of him at this time. Inasmuch as the Emperor is bored by novels, and has no use for heroes of romance in the practical world of his calculations, there is an undercurrent of criticism in these pretty phrases. But he adds : " A handsome young man, more intelligent than is usually supposed." At a later date, Napoleon utters profound truths regarding Alexander : " The tsar is an attractive figure, well formed to exercise a victorious charm on those with whom he comes in contact. Had I been inclined to surrender to superficial impressions, I should have become devoted to him instantly. But there is something peculiar about him, which I can best express by saying that in all he is and does there seems to be something lacking. The strangest point about the matter is that it is impossible to foresee precisely what will be lacking in any given instance, for the defect is infinitely variable." Thus, the man whose friendship is all-important to him seems to him utterly feminine. His final judgment takes the form of an overwhelming compliment: " Were Alexander a woman, I think I should fall passionately in love with him."