The first impressions had been good: Marie-Louise, though not exactly beautiful, and standing half a head taller than Napoleon, was judged to have a ‘fresh face’. The courtiers waited, longing for dinner, expecting at any minute to see her reappear in a new gown. Finally came a message to say that Their Majesties had retired for the night. Later, Bertrand discovered that the Archbishop of Vienna had given Marie-Louise a document stating that the proxy marriage was valid in the eyes of the Church: Napoleon had taken his new Empress straight to bed.
For the civil marriage at Saint-Cloud on 1 April, the early heavy rain had cleared and the spectacle of so many kings and queens, in full robes and uniforms and jewellery, was dazzling, even if Napoleon’s sisters and Hortense made a fuss about having to carry Marie-Louise’s train and dropped it to show their displeasure. But the start of the marriage was marred by a terrible fire in the Austrian Embassy, where Prince Schwartzenberg was holding a ball in honour of the Emperor and his new Empress, attended by the whole court. Two temporary tented rooms had been put up to house the 1,200 guests; a fire broke out and tore like lightning across the canvas; struggling to escape through one door, many people were trampled to death. The women’s ball dresses went up in flames, which spread from one dress to the next. The ambassador’s sister, who was 22 and pregnant, was killed when a chandelier fell on her head; the Russian Ambassador, the frail and corpulent Prince Kourakin, was severely injured. The finest jewels in Paris had been worn for the ball. Some of the women who managed to reach the streets were attacked by thieves. Prince Kourakin, who was wearing diamonds to the value of many millions of francs, lost them in the fray. ‘I never saw such a blaze,’ wrote an American visitor to Paris who happened to be nearby. ‘It seemed as if half the city was on fire’, the flames casting light on an incredible scene of half-dressed frantic people running around looking for friends and relations, while passers-by, pretending to help, snatched diamonds from their fingers, ears and hair.
In Brussels, the old nobility was not proving altogether easy to court, in spite of the best aristocratic efforts of Lucie and Frédéric; but they were growing slightly warmer towards the French. And when Napoleon, less than a month after his marriage, decided to bring his new bride to what had been the capital of her father’s Belgian possessions, many of the remaining reservations disappeared. Brussels went into a frenzy of preparations: houses were painted and redecorated, a new staircase was built up the side of the Hôtel de Ville, with a grand new entrance, and, along the roads the imperial party would take, sand was spread, and even carpets were laid. The walls of Marie-Louise’s apartments in the Château de Laeken were hung with pleated pale pink satin, looped with garlands of roses in carved silver. For days before the great event, musicians could be heard rehearsing in different parts of the city.
On 28 April, Frédéric and General Chambarlhac went to receive the Emperor and Empress at Tubize. On a fine spring day, Napoleon and Marie-Louise rode into Brussels in an open carriage, accompanied by a special guard of honour in green and maroon, raised by Frédéric from Brussels’s leading families, Humbert and Auguste de Liederkerke among them. With them came the kings and queens of Westphalia and Naples, Prince Metternich and Prince Schwartzenberg of Austria, and all their suites of ministers, officers and attendants. The cannons roared, the muskets fired salvoes, and bells were rung in every church. Behind came the musicians, playing and singing in harmony. There were shouts of ‘Vive l’Impératrice’, who, it was generally agreed, had a dignified carriage and a sweet expression.
Next day, Lucie was ordered to present the ladies of Brussels to the Empress. Marie-Louise was pleasant, but said nothing. She had, wrote Lucie later, no trace of haughtiness but was, on the contrary, ‘gentle, good, obliging’ and extremely shy, ‘which is proper for her age’. She was also ‘remarkably naive’. At court, Marie-Louise had already earned a reputation for prudishness, making clear that she would tolerate no doubles entendres or risqué remarks.
The city of Brussels had organised a ball in honour of the Emperor and Empress and, to her immense pleasure, Lucie was invited first to a small private dinner at the Château de Laeken. It would mean a rapid change of dress, but the prospect of spending two hours with Napoleon charmed her, and she liked this kind of challenge. She positioned a maid with her ball dress at the Hôtel de Ville and pressed the mayor, the Duc d’Ursel, into service to act as her escort. At dinner there were just eight people; Lucie was on Napoleon’s left. He spent most of the meal questioning her in great detail about the people of Brussels, about the lace-makers and the convents of the Béguines, women living in communities but not bound to perpetual vows.
It was all over in 45 minutes, as Napoleon never liked to waste much time on food; but in the drawing room afterwards he continued to talk to Lucie, while teasing his brother Jerome about all the ‘rascally’ men he had taken into his service in Westphalia. To Lucie, seeing that she was well versed in history, he talked about the French kings and the style of their reigns, saying that he thought that Louis XIV had only proved ‘truly great’ towards the end of his life. When he reached Louis XVI, he paused, then said, ‘sadly and with respect, “an unfortunate Prince!”’.
Then came the dash to the Hôtel de Ville with the Duc d’Ursel. Lucie was standing in her allotted place, in full ball dress and jewellery, when Napoleon and Marie-Louise, holding a bouquet of flowers made of precious stones, arrived. The Emperor, complimenting Lucie on the speed with which she had changed, asked her whether she would be dancing. He laughed when she replied that, being a woman of 40, she no longer danced. The fact that the Empress did not dance either was seen as a hopeful sign that she might already be pregnant. Next day, the imperial suite left for Antwerp, Frédéric accompanying them by boat on the canal. News did indeed soon come that the Empress was expecting a child.
The visit had passed off very well. At least in part due to Frédéric’s diplomatic skills and instincts, the right people had been noticed, the right honours bestowed. When, not long afterwards, Humbert went to Paris for his examinations for the Council of State, Napoleon, who was present–no detail of his administration being too small–took over the questioning. Discovering that Humbert was fluent in Italian as well as English, he gave him the sub-prefecture of Florence.
Life in Brussels continued, in its pleasant, social way, broken only by a painful operation to remove a tumour from below Frédéric’s ankle, for which the Princesse d’Hénin sent a trusted Paris surgeon. It was just as well, for the wound had become inflamed after a Belgian doctor applied caustic in error, and there had been talk of amputation.
Frédéric was not yet able to walk when news arrived that a British fleet of 40 ships of the line and 30 frigates had entered the mouth of the river Escaut, and laid siege to Flushing. As a first step to challenge Napoleon’s domination of continental Europe, the British plan was to move on to take Antwerp. Napoleon was away from Paris. Arch-Chancellor Cambacérès, alerted by telegraph, began marshalling troops from nearby garrisons and turned out the Garde Nationale. In Brussels, Frédéric gathered together the Guardsmen from the Dyle. Every day, leaving Brussels at five in the morning, he and Lucie went by carriage to Antwerp, changing horses along the way, to inspect the defences. After a late breakfast with Malouet, they returned to Brussels, a round trip of some six hours on the road. It was taken for granted that Lucie would accompany Frédéric: their marriage had become a partnership in every aspect of their lives.
The British campaign started well, but soon faltered; the plan to take Antwerp was abandoned. By now the French, who had been caught off guard, had regrouped, though it was widely agreed in Brussels that had the British adopted a different strategy they could indeed have entered Belgium unopposed. As it was, both armies were struck down with Flushing fever, the surrounding dikes being full of mosquitoes, which, arriving on top of dysentery and typhoid, put four in every ten of the 40,000 British soldiers out of action. The French gardes, bivouacked on the island of Walcheren, cam
e down with the same fevers, and all the surrounding hospitals were soon overflowing with sick young men and boys. The prefecture in Brussels became a depot, where families handed in spare mattresses and linen. Lucie was working harder than ever.
But trouble was brewing for Frédéric. Napoleon was looking for culprits for France’s slow response to the British invasion. M. Malouet, recently appointed conseiller d’état, warned that people were beginning to intrigue against him. The very qualities that made Frédéric so remarkable–his directness and incorruptibility–were ill-suited to the slippery world of Empire politics. In Brussels, people came forward to accuse him of having failed to summon the Guardsmen with sufficient haste. Only the courageous intervention of a young officer, who named the true culprits, deflected Napoleon’s wrath. Frédéric had also made a dangerous enemy of Anne-Jean Savary, newly elevated Duc de Rovigo and appointed Minister of Police, by refusing to further the ambitions of one of his relations.
Early in 1811, Lucie and Frédéric went to Paris to see Humbert off to Florence. ‘This departure,’ wrote Lucie later, ‘was the beginning of a long separation and was exceedingly painful to me.’ Fanny had been staying in Brussels and now, like everyone else connected to the court, was hastening home to be present at the birth of Marie-Louise’s baby. Hers was turning out to be a very happy marriage and Lucie felt closer to her. Fanny was already the mother of two children, Napoleon and Hortense, born without mishap despite her insistence on accompanying Bertrand all over Germany, when their carriage turned over several times on the bad roads.
In Paris, Lucie was cautiously reunited with Claire, who, to her alarm, was still pursuing Chateaubriand, with as little success as before. She had two serious rivals and Lucie found the petty jealousies and adulation of these three ‘priestesses’ ‘ludicrous’, each plotting behind the others’ backs to ingratiate herself further in the eyes of their complacent god. Subterfuge and malice remained foreign to Lucie’s nature. One evening, she was delighted to discover that she had been invited to attend a play at the Tuileries, where luxury shone ever more brightly, with much silver and lapis lazuli, and all lines straight and regular, everything that was ‘capricious and irregular’ out of fashion.
There was a small and select audience of just 50 lavishly dressed courtiers, who expressed surprise when Napoleon and Marie-Louise greeted the more simply dressed Lucie so warmly. To boost the French lace and silk industries, men without an office at court were required to wear the old habit habillé, the heavily embroidered silk coat of the ancien régime: rugged old soldiers, veterans of the republican wars, were to be seen in shimmering pinks, greens and pale greys.
Once Humbert had left for Florence, Lucie longed to return to Aymar and her daughters. Frédéric, evidently uneasy about his enemies, decided that they should remain in Paris to await the delivery of the Empress’s baby. On the evening of 19 March, news came that Marie-Louise had gone into labour. The ladies-in-waiting hovered, were sent home, recalled, then sent home again. In the late morning of the 20th, a first cannon shot, fired from the Invalides, was heard. Paris froze: carriages stopped, people hurried to their windows, the streets filled. There were to be 20 shots for a girl, 25 for a boy. By the 19th, an expectant hush silenced the whole city. When the 21st boomed out, there was an explosion of cheering.
That evening, at nine o’clock, the court was summoned to the Tuileries to attend the provisional baptism of François-Charles-Joseph-Napoleon, King of Rome. Lucie, Fanny and Mme Dillon joined the throng jostling for positions close to the aisle where Napoleon and the baby would pass. They found an excellent spot at the top of the staircase, just by the row of the much decorated veterans of the Vieille Garde. When the baby appeared, carried by the royal governess on a satin and lace white cushion, Lucie was able to observe him very closely. Lucie had seen many newborn babies, not least her own six. This baby, she was certain, was not newborn. But whose it was, and whether he had been switched with another child, was a mystery she discussed only with Frédéric.
Towards the end of summer, though Marie-Louise had still not recovered her health after the birth of the baby, Napoleon returned with her to Belgium. While he went on a tour of inspection of his northern defences, the Empress stayed at the Château de Laeken. Lucie was expected to spend every evening with her, playing lotto. This time, she found Marie-Louise excruciatingly dull. Every day the Empress, holding out her wrist to have her pulse taken, asked whether Lucie thought she had a temperature; every day, Lucie replied that not being a doctor, she could not tell. When the Duc d’Ursel tried to interest her in an outing to the Fôret des Soignes, she said that she did not care for forests; offered a portrait of her illustrious grandmother, Maria-Theresa, to hang on the walls of her apartments, she pronounced the frame too old-fashioned. ‘In short,’ concluded Lucie briskly, ‘this insignificant woman’ was utterly unworthy of ‘the man whose destiny she shared’. Lucie did not meet Marie-Louise again until after Napoleon had fallen: and then ‘she was still just as stupid’.
On St Helena Napoleon would say that he had wanted to ‘make Paris the true capital of Europe’. By 1811, Rome had been annexed to the French Empire as a free imperial city; the lands lying on the north and east coasts of the Adriatic had become the Illyrian provinces; the Hanse cities of the North Sea had been absorbed; and when Louis abdicated, Holland had been incorporated into France by imperial decree. All that stood in the way of French hegemony were Britain and Russia, and victory in Spain, where French forces were stalled. Napoleon needed soldiers, to replace the tens of thousands who had died, and those now struggling wounded and crippled back from Spain. For yet more recruits he turned to his prefects to carry out levies in their departments.
Some of the attacks on Frédéric at the time of the British invasion had been justified: though he had indeed tried to raise men for the Garde Nationale, he had noticeably failed to enthuse the Belgians for Napoleon’s wars. Nor had he done much since his arrival to chase up the growing number of deserters. Ordered by Paris to seize the parents who could not pay the fines of young men who had deserted or were in hiding, he refused, replying that it was not only illegal but pointless to send parents to jail for their sons. While mobile units scoured the countryside for fugitive soldiers, Frédéric kept repeating that fines, threats, forfeits and the taking of liens on entire communes seemed to him morally and legally wrong. Together with his transparent honesty, Frédéric was a stickler for doing things according to the law, and he was never afraid of quarrelling with anyone over matters of principle.
None of this made him popular with the Ministry of the Interior. Nor did his extreme reluctance to force Belgian families to send their sons to lycées and military academies in France, a suggestion greeted by the ville haute with horror. Frédéric had also been less than helpful when instructed by Rovigo to draw up a list of well-born, unmarried, rich Belgian girls over the age of 14, together with descriptions of their appearance, any deformities, talents and religious views, as possible wives for Napoleon’s senior officers. As Frédéric saw it, these were simply forms of hostage-taking.
M. Réal was the member of the French Council of State in charge of the ‘surveillance’ of the nine Belgian departments; Lucie referred to him as a ‘superior kind of spy’. In 1811, Réal arrived in Brussels on a tour of inspection, telling Lucie as soon as he set foot in the prefecture that to his mind Belgium was nothing but a ‘country of fanatics and fools’. A number of Belgian priests had taken the lead in opposing Napoleon’s stand against the Pope and Belgium was full of priests forced into hiding by their refusal to recognise the concordat. The Archbishop of Malines, M. de Pradt, however, far from protecting his recalcitrant priests, was in league with the Commissioner of Police, and when asked to give them up had been reported as saying: ‘You want eight? Well, I will give you 45.’ Neither the Commissioner nor the Archbishop approved of Frédéric, whom they suspected–rightly–of doing nothing when asked to track down the leader of the rebels. Nor did the Archbis
hop care for Lucie, whom he considered responsible for reporting back to Paris some injudicious remarks he had made to her. She had indeed repeated them to the Princesse d’Hénin, hoping to amuse her, but the letter had been intercepted and its contents shown to Talleyrand who used them in jest with the Archbishop. Lucie herself was not always tactful, and it had been foolish to take such risks.
While M. Réal was in Brussels, he stayed at the prefecture. One night Lucie gave a dinner in his honour, to which she invited all the people known to be particularly well disposed towards Frédéric. After dinner, there was a glittering reception for the ville haute. When the guests left, M. Réal expressed his disgust at so many useless elegant and illustrious people. Frédéric replied that he was sorry that he felt that way, but that he was certain that Napoleon saw things differently.
Réal returned to Paris to file a highly critical report. Not only was the Prefect weak and ineffective, but he was under the sway of his domineering and wilful wife, who had created a ‘court’ for herself in Brussels. ‘If called upon to act in difficult circumstances, he would probably lack the necessary resourcefulness and severity…Married to a woman of considerable spirit, who has the greatest influence over him…’ Frédéric was, the report went on, too liberal, too lacking in administrative firmness and too directionless.
There was some reluctance now among Belgian guests to attend Lucie’s receptions in the prefecture, lest they be perceived as too closely associated with Frédéric’s stubbornness in his dealings with Paris. The Comte de Mérode, whom Frédéric had helped avoid being sucked into Napoleon’s net by overlooking false details in his residency papers, described Lucie’s soirées as ‘splendid’ but added that ‘one went to them with apprehension, so frightened were we of being seen and conscripted’. When Talleyrand came to Brussels to preside over the election of a senator and two deputies, Lucie found him refreshingly charming and entertaining, and noted that in comparison M. de Pradt looked like Scapin, Molière’s comic buffoon, noted for his cowardice, in a purple cassock. Talleyrand was himself increasingly at odds with Napoleon over their very different views on the future of Europe, and by now Napoleon had already made his much repeated remark about his Foreign Minister being nothing but ‘shit in yellow silk stockings’.
Dancing to the Precipice Page 40