by Alan Schom
The English had left “15,000 dead” behind, Napoleon boasted to the world (as opposed to the actual figure of 4,107), adding that they would soon “find their graves” in Spain and Portugal as well.
The descent on Walcheren and South Beveland had the unanticipated effect of a complete break between Louis and Napoleon. Louis had been scolded by Napoleon for immediately assuming command of the few French troops in Holland against the British landing force. Louis, a former general officer in the French army, was rebuked for daring to interfere in “French military affairs.” “Can I not consider myself deeply humiliated,” Louis responded. “You are simply hurting yourself and your dynasty, and it will hurt Your Majesty more than you realize.” “This poor Dutch nation of yours certainly has a right to complain about you,” Napoleon parried in response. “What she is suffering from today results from the instability of your own character and from the lack of judgment in the measures you have taken.”
The gloves were off, as a desperate Napoleon sought to stabilize a Europe he himself had destabilized through his unrelenting conquests and subsequent territorial divisions. He had hastily razed to the ground centuries-old, time-tested geopolitical structures, replacing them with new ones of his own fabrication, all poorly constructed and fatally flawed in design. And now he informed Louis that he intended to dethrone him and annex Holland along with the rest of Europe. Louis declined to abdicate at first, although he did withdraw from public affairs to devote himself to writing an epic poem, La Mort de Marie. When he did finally agree to step down, it was on one condition: “There is only one way I will agree to this, if Your Majesty absolutely wants it, and that is by replacing me with my son.” Napoleon rejected this out of hand; he wanted Holland for himself. “If the king abdicates, in no case do I intend to replace him by the prince royal [the eldest surviving son]...His throne has been destroyed as a result of the English expedition, when the king demonstrated his total inability to defend himself, and therefore Holland can no longer exist,” Napoleon announced. One year later, on July 19, 1810, he officially annexed that country. The English invasion and Louis’s mental instability proved the ideal excuses for sequestering yet another state. Brother Napoleon, who had defied Louis by separating him from his wife and giving her refuge, and had then condoned forbidding Louis even to see his own son, capping that by stealing him — adopting the baby as his own — had now stolen his crown as well!
Meanwhile, although the English threat was over for the moment, Napoleon’s absence from Paris at this time had created another menace. Revolt was near the surface in France. If Bonaparte did not defeat the Austrians, the prefect of the Ourthe had warned Fouché on July 6 before news of Wagram had reached Paris, “there will be an immediate insurrection against Napoleon.The French Foreign Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the General Police, and the War Ministry were all receiving similar reports.
Even with the victory of Wagram, because of the immediate failure of Napoleon to wring a peace treaty — or even an admission of defeat — from the Austrians, all sorts of rumors of revolt reached the French capital. Cambacérès’s mobilization of National Guardsmen throughout much of France, some thirty thousand in Paris alone, put Napoleon in a state of panic. All those armed citizen-soldiers could now turn against him. War Minister Clarke echoed these fears: “It’s another levée of [17]93 all over again,” he warned. This fear appeared to be centered round Bernadotte, who had earlier joined in a plot in Brittany to overthrow Napoleon and who now, legally in charge of the troops and guardsmen in the Low Countries, might serve as a rallying point to French National Guardsmen as well. Bernadotte “is preparing to play a great role...of grave consequences,” General Clarke warned. What is more, immediately on reaching Antwerp Bernadotte had acted like a dictator, not an army commander, assuming all civil and military authority in the region. Napoleon assured Clarke that he was fully aware of Bernadotte’s complicity.“There is a sort of national vertigo in France now turning everyone’s heads,” Bonaparte explained to Fouché. “All the reports reaching me inform me that the National Guardsmen have been issued arms, even those in Piedmont, in Languedoc, in Provence, and in the Dauphiné! Why the devil was this authorized? Under such circumstances as these the least incident could spark off a crisis! It could ignite the whole of France.” In fact only Acting Interior Minister Fouché had the authority to call them up. In any event the guardsmen were gradually disarmed over the next several weeks, and Bernadotte — who was allegedly named in a plot to have replaced his brother-in-law, Napoleon, and now caught corresponding with Napoleon’s enemies — was immediately removed from his command in Holland. (Despite the proof in hand, Napoleon once again failed to take punitive action. Instead he offered Bernadotte distant posts at Ponte Corvo in Italy, and in Spain, all of which were declined. Although Bernadotte finally accepted the post of governor-general of Rome, he never actually took it up. Much to Napoleon’s astonishment, he was eventually offered the crown of Sweden. On September 4, 1810, Bernadotte received the official document naming him heir to the Swedish throne.
By mid-October the crisis was over, but Napoleon was more aware than ever how very insecure was his imperial throne. It was not just insurrection in the Low Countries, or in the Confederation of the Rhine, or in Prussia, or the open rebellion in Austria, not to mention disquieting signs in Russia, or even the news of fresh disasters in Iberia. It was in Paris itself; it was in France. Bonaparte could no longer afford to leave the French capital for any length of time, it seemed. He who had at Vienna announced his personal return to Spain in order to drive Sir Arthur Wellesley and the English into the sea would not only never see Spain again but was no longer sure of his own capital. As for his splendid plan to take Gibraltar and North Africa...
Chapter Thirty-One – The Last Rose of Summer
‘A prince who is considered...a kind man is a king who is doomed.’
Charles the Bald had built the first castle there in the ninth century, the future Charles the Wise had convoked the Estates-General there back in 1358, and Jeanne d’Arc had been held prisoner there by the Burgundians in 1430. Louis XV, or Louis the Beloved, who ruled France for all but five years of his life, from 1715 to 1774, had rebuilt the small, dank medieval fortified castle into a sprawling, elegant country palace with a light-colored limestone facade and immense cobbled cour d’honneur. Surrounded by some thirty thousand acres of forest and field, Compiègne was a favorite of the Bourbons, to which this same King Louis had brought two of his celebrated mistresses, Mesdames de Pompadour and du Barry.
Like Napoleon that king had taken an unusually strong interest in Polish affairs, but unlike him Louis had tried to prevent its partitioning. Like Napoleon, he is remembered for a series of wars, including the Seven Years’ War, which ended so disastrously for France with the loss of vast territories in India and Canada. It was during his reign, however, that both Lorraine and Corsica had been added to the French monarchy, and thus thanks to him that Napoleon Bonaparte had been born a French citizen. Also like Napoleon, he had been interested in closer ties with Austria, if not with the same intention.
Now, at the end of March 1810, after a week of incessant preparations, a small figure in a gray coat, protected from the heavy spring rain by umbrellas held by equerries and footmen, and joined by another gentleman, tall, broad-shouldered, and towering over him, entered a calèche. Despite the downpour he called for his secretary, ordering the drenched young man to see to some dispatches, and then snapped the window shut as he ordered the coachman to make all haste along the road to Soissons, some twenty-one miles distant. The little man was of course Emperor Napoleon, a fact that his last-minute, incognito change of clothes could hardly have disguised, had it not been for the rain. It was cold, and he was cold. He was always cold, even in July when he had a fire going. Next to him in an extraordinary uniform of his own concoction, concealed by a bulging overcoat, sat his brother-in-law, King Joachim of Naples.
The whip cracked as the horses hurled th
e light coach forward across cobbles and mud toward Soissons. All the carefully planned arrangements had been cast aside on a whim. A courier had arrived twenty minutes earlier, informing Napoleon that his bride and new empress, the eighteen-year-old Austrian archduchess Marie-Louise, was near Soissons. Elaborate marquees had been set up on the near side of Compiègne, and on the other side by Soissons, from which both parties were to have alighted and made final preparations prior to meeting at an even larger tent set up at a midway point. But, as impatient as ever, Napoleon was advancing at a dangerous speed, given the state of the roads. How many times had he and his closest officers been thrown from overturned carriages in just such weather? But no matter; fate was on his side. If he could escape a dozen major battles without a scratch, apart from that bruised heel back at Aspern-Essling, he need hardly worry about a little rain.
Reaching the hamlet of Courcelles, he encountered the last courier sent by his bride just moments earlier. She would soon be passing. He ordered the coachman to stop here, and he and Murat descended at the doorway of the medieval church to take shelter from the rain. In a few minutes the cavalcade of nearly three dozen carriages, preceded and followed by hundreds of cavalry, hove into sight as the curious little figure stepped into the rain and flagged them down. The empress’s equerry hesitantly intervened, until at last, when only an arm’s length away, he finally recognized the drenched emperor. Throwing the carriage door open despite the deluge, Napoleon — ignoring his sister, Queen Caroline (Murat), whom he had earlier dispatched to greet the archduchess at Strasbourg, threw his arms around the astonished young lady. Slamming the door again, Napoleon ordered them to proceed directly to Compiègne. That there might be dozens of servants and officials still standing under those marquees awaiting their arrival was irrelevant.
At 10:00 P.M. the courtyard of Compiègne was crisscrossed with flickering shadows from torches in the continuing rain. Carriage after carriage arrived, equerries and chamberlains barking out orders, as Napoleon and Marie-Louise were swept into the reception rooms of the palace, where for once Napoleon failed to rush over to the nearest fire.
Méneval, who now met her for the first time, recalled the impression she made:
Marie-Louise’s figure — she then in the full blush of youth — was perfect. The cut of her dress was longer than that worn [in France] at this time, which only added to her natural dignity and contrasted happily with the disgraceful shortening of the hem of our ladies. Her color was animated by the movement of the journey and by her timidity; her fine, abundant, and light chestnut-colored hair framed a full and fresh face, to which her eyes, filled with sweetness, gave a charming expression. Her lips, a bit thick, recalled those of the reigning family of Austria, just as the slight convexity of her nose distinguished those of the princes of the House of Bourbon. She gave off an aura of candor and innocence, and a plumpness that she was to lose after childbearing announced the state of her good health.
A warm dinner had been awaiting them in the marquee along the road, and another here, but after making preliminary introductions, Napoleon whisked the startled empress to her bedroom where, he informed her, he would be joining her shortly. Although no French civil or religious ceremony had been carried out, the couple had been married by proxy in Austria, Napoleon represented by Marshal Berthier, prince of Neuchâtel (and more recently, of Wagram), and by the bride’s uncle, none other than the same Archduke Karl he had fought at Wagram. Uncle (Cardinal) Fesch, now hastily summoned by Napoleon, assured his impatient nephew that legally they were married.
According to the long, elaborate schedule of events, Napoleon was to have slept at the Chancellery. “But he did nothing of the sort,” his valet, Constant, recalled. An impatient Napoleon bade the dozens of courtiers and family members, including his latest mistress, the lovely Madame de Mathis, who had shared his bed the night before, a hasty goodnight and disappeared. Never in the long, varied, and sometimes unsavory past of the Bourbons had anyone so flouted the conventions, customs, and decorum of the court and country as this parvenu Bonaparte. The officials laughed, the ladies tittered, and Napoleon betook himself back to the apartments. “After a long conversation with the empress,” Constant continued, “he returned to his chamber, undressed, perfumed himself with eau de cologne, and then, wearing only a dressing gown, he returned secretly to the empress.”
Emerging late the next morning, beaming an unusually broad smile, Napoleon said to Méneval as he pulled his ear, “Mon cher, marry a German. They are the best women in the world: sweet, good, naive, and as fresh as roses.” His remarks were soon making the rounds, Murat and Caroline in particular laughing at this uninhibited Napoleon.
After creating three new marshals — Oudinot, Marmont, and MacDonald — and three new principalities (Wagram for Berthier, Essling for Masséna, and Eckmühl for Davout, not to mention six new duchies for Gaudin, Champagny, Fouché, Régnier, Maret, and Clarke), Napoleon also announced the creation of a new honorary order of the Trois Toisons (Three Fleeces). This new honor would be granted only to officers who had received at least six wounds, irrespective of rank, Lieutenant Colonel Marbot being personally named by Napoleon as its first member. It was probably meant to supersede the overly powerful and independent Legion of Honor, which had assumed too much influence as a new form of “landed aristocracy” to suit Napoleon.
Following the Austrian emperor’s ratification of the Treaty of Schönbrunn on October 14, 1809, Napoleon and his staff had returned to France via Munich, reaching Fontainebleau on the morning of October 26.
There he remained for the next few weeks. Determined to break the bonds of marriage with Josephine, he summoned her to the eighteen-hundred-room castle. But, as Méneval put it, “he could not bring himself to do it at first, and then one evening after one of the saddest and most silent of meals, he finally broke the ice,” officially informing her of the necessity of a divorce. “One can readily understand the pain and despair Empress Josephine felt at this moment, when at long last the final glimmer of hope had been dashed forever.” “I need a womb,” as Napoleon summed it up with his characteristic Bonaparte bluntness. Josephine of course had known of this intention for years and had pretended to turn a deaf ear to it. But now, confronting the reality of the situation, she burst into tears:
Napoleon, for his part, having relieved himself of this unbearable burden, remained profoundly moved by the anguish he was causing her, and from this moment hence he did not cease to surround her with the most tender attentions and to heap consolation upon her in this hour of despair — care, attention, and consolation that Josephine at first heard with utter indifference.
It had been as heartrending a decision regarding another human being as Napoleon had ever had to make, and it left him shaken. Josephine was the only woman he had ever been truly devoted to — after his own fashion of course. Moreover, and this was the real test, she was the only woman he felt completely responsible for — more than his mother, more than his sisters, more than any of his numerous mistresses, however much he might have found certain of them, especially Marie Walewska, warm, sincere, and attractive. Josephine had come first, and she would always remain first in his thoughts.
Everyone had commented on Josephine and, remarkably enough, everyone had agreed almost precisely on the traits and qualities they had found so appealing in her, which the young Baron de Méneval best summed up:
Josephine had an irresistible attraction; she was not outstandingly beautiful, but rather, “her grace surpassed any beauty,” as our good La Fontaine [the celebrated French fabulist] put it. She had that light abandon, that supple and elegant movement, that casual grace of the creole. She was always even-tempered. She was good and sweet, affable and indulgent with everyone without exception. She was neither extremely intelligent nor well educated, her exquisite politeness, her great pleasantness in society and at court, and her innocent artifices were always at her command, allowing her to know precisely what to say and do at a given moment. The e
mperor had loved her very much and always remained fond of her, [feelings] fortified by habit and by her attractive qualities. One might have said she had been born for the role that the elevation of rank had imposed upon, and which rose with, her...She had married his [Napoleon’s] glory as well as his person.
Napoleon, who had been so enraptured with Josephine in the early days of his marriage, carried away emotionally as he would never again be by any woman, had had all his hopes and faith in her or any other woman dashed forever on learning of her public affair with Captain Charles. Napoleon had ended that humiliation, while also forcing Josephine to break off all relations with the other feckless souls, the other light ladies of her acquaintance of her wild Chaumière days. Thereafter a much chastened and quickly aging Josephine dedicated herself to her husband and family but could produce no more children, which for Napoleon was an unbearable disappointment. His dozens of sexual flings over the ensuing years (usually arranged by Christophe Duroc, obliging courtiers, or occasionally the Murats, who wanted to destroy Josephine) had resulted in scene after scene of tears and hysterics, and indeed Josephine remained highly nervous and easily upset emotionally. But Napoleon loved her, and he always would, while laughing at her antics and even scorning her. After she insulted him before his entire army in Italy, and then in Egypt, Commander in Chief Bonaparte had lost all respect for marital fidelity. Thereafter anything would go, and did, beginning with his much flaunted affair with Pauline Fourès in Cairo. And now, nearly a dozen years later, they had come to the end. Once betrayed by someone, Napoleon never again trusted him or her. At the same time, had Josephine produced progeny for the mighty Bonaparte dynasty, he probably would not have divorced her, although even that is not certain, given the great plans he had in store for his career.