He ordered Savary to investigate, and continued on his tour, taking in Breda, Berg-op-Zoom (where he boarded a yacht after a copious lunch and was seasick) and Flushing, where he made his displeasure felt that the town had capitulated to the British the previous year. They visited Middleburg, Brussels, where they attended a grand reception, Ghent, Bruges, where they visited the cathedral, Ostend, Dunkirk and Lille, and then went via Calais, Boulogne, Dieppe, Le Havre and Rouen back to Paris, where they arrived on the night of 1 June. Napoleon held a council of his ministers in the morning, and the following day sacked Fouché.
As Napoleon had left the capital for Compiègne immediately following his marriage, it was only now that the various festivities that would normally have accompanied it were held. Marie-Louise was awkward and did not possess Josephine’s charm. Unlike Josephine, she could not remember people or their names, which led to embarrassing situations. Her awkwardness was contagious, and a sense of constraint reigned whenever she was present.15
The city of Paris gave a fête at the Hôtel de Ville for the notables of the capital to meet the new empress, but it was a joyless occasion, spoiled as much by Napoleon’s evident impatience and inability to enjoy such events as by her manner. More successful was a fête given by Pauline at her property in Neuilly, in the grounds of which she arranged magical tableaux and illuminations. Actors of the Théâtre-Français acted out a play in one part, dancers executed a ballet in another, both vying for the attention of the guests. Two orchestras placed at opposite ends of the park played as though one were the echo of the other. There were temples with goddesses, a hermitage with a hermit, and a cherub who offered the empress a garland. At the end of the park there was a replica of Schönbrunn, with fountains and dancers in Tyrolean costume, at which point Marie-Louise burst into tears, whether out of homesickness or exhaustion nobody could tell.16
Two weeks later, on 28 June, while they were at dinner in the Tuileries, Eugène was announced and Napoleon rose from the table while Marie-Louise was still eating her ices. She protested, but he ignored her, sensing the news was important. It was: Louis had decided to give up the Dutch throne. Napoleon expostulated, gesticulating ‘like a real Corsican’ according to one witness, but the news should not have come as a surprise.17
While he too enjoyed festooning himself with trappings of monarchy, Louis had taken his job as King of Holland seriously. He worked hard to mould the disparate and traditionally republican elements he was given into a modern constitutional monarchy with a national identity. He introduced fiscal and administrative reforms, and a new educational system. Holland was economically devastated by the blockade, yet with its innumerable estuaries, creeks and islands it was impossible to seal against smuggling, so goods still got through, but the state could not control or tax them. In December 1808 Napoleon closed its frontier with France in order to keep them out, compounding the problem for Holland. He demanded that Louis supply another 40,000 troops over and above the 12,000 already serving France in Germany and the 3,000 fighting in Spain. In 1809 he refused to allow him to introduce a version of the Code he had painstakingly adapted to Dutch conditions, and insisted on imposing his own.18
Using the pretext of the British landing on Walcheren the previous year, Napoleon had sent French troops to take control of the coastal areas and then annexed the provinces of Brabant, Zealand and Guelders to France. In March 1810 he had forced Louis to place all Dutch troops under French command, and in June Marshal Oudinot set off for Amsterdam, where Louis was instructed to put on a triumphal ingress for him. Napoleon had made his younger brother’s position untenable, yet he was upset by his decision to abdicate and took it as a personal affront. ‘The folly of the King of Holland has upset me,’ he wrote to Josephine, ‘but I have grown used to the ingratitude and the fickleness of my brothers; they serve me poorly, as they have little love for France or me.’ He had been stung by the behaviour of Lucien, who had ignored his wishes, set off for America but been caught by the Royal Navy and taken to England as a prisoner of war.19
Louis abdicated formally on 2 July in favour of his son Napoléon-Louis and fled, taking refuge at Gratz in Austria. A week later Napoleon decreed the incorporation of Holland into France, arguing that ‘it is complementary to the empire, the estuary of its rivers; its navy, its ports, its commerce and its finances can only prosper if combined with those of France’. The move went down badly with public opinion in France, as people feared it might provoke another war and could see no point to it.20
Paris was in sombre mood. On 1 July the Austrian ambassador Prince Schwarzenberg had given a ball in honour of the newlyweds. After they had watched ‘a charming ballet’ performed on a lawn against the backdrop of a trompe-l’oeil of the gardens at Laxenburg, when the ball had started and the dancing was in full swing one of the marquees caught fire. Panic ensued as people rushed for the exits and men tripped over their swords while struggling to carry out fainting ladies. Napoleon managed to lead Marie-Louise out and drive her to safety, and then returned to help, earning praise for his handling of the situation. ‘Heart-rending cries of pain and despair could be heard on all sides as mothers called out to daughters and husbands their wives,’ in the words of one officer. ‘The garden lit up as though it were daylight, filled instantly with people shouting as they searched for each other and running to extinguish their clothes which were on fire.’ The ambassador’s sister-in-law Princess Schwarzenberg rushed back into the marquee in search of her daughter, but died as it collapsed on her. Several others died of burns, and many were permanently scarred. People did not fail to draw analogies with the celebrations of the marriage of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in 1770, when a firework display went wrong, precipitating a panic in which over 200 people were crushed to death.21
Analogies with the ancien régime were not out of place. A new court etiquette was introduced, consisting of 634 articles, based on that of 1710. Colonel Lejeune was astonished when he came with reports from Spain to find himself instructed by the ballet master from the Opéra on how to perform three courtly bows when introduced into the imperial presence. The efforts of broad-shouldered proletarian warriors to submit to the new etiquette often ended in ridicule. The eighteenth-century silk habit habillé obligatory for court balls looked absurd on men with a military gait and scarred faces, sometimes still bandaged or with an arm in a sling.22
Having married a niece of the last King of France, Napoleon began referring to his ‘uncle Louis XVI’, and adopted a kind of walk he had been told the Bourbons had affected, which in his case turned into an unflattering waddle. He had the slogan ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité’, which had been painted over the entrance to every public building in Paris during the Revolution, effaced. He considered going back on his plan to refashion the Madeleine into a Temple of Glory dedicated to French heroes and turning it instead into an expiatory chapel dedicated to the guillotined Louis XVI. He carried his policy of social fusion to bizarre lengths, at one point issuing a circular to all prefects to draw up lists of nubile girls from noble families suitable for marriage to soldiers and officials – the purpose was not so much to conjoin as to subsume and legitimise. Yet it had not worked in his own case, and he had lost nothing of his social awkwardness. ‘It is difficult to convey how gauche he was in a drawing room,’ recalled Metternich, who had come to Paris to represent Francis I at the marriage.23
‘The court had grown rigid and lost everything it still conserved of social ease,’ recalled Victorine de Chastenay, adding that Marie-Louise made people regret Josephine. She had possessed a grace and an ancien-régime savoir-vivre tempered by all the experiences of the Revolution, and created an atmosphere in which all could feel at ease. She had also exerted a humanising influence on Napoleon, often bringing him down to earth from his flights of fancy. Now Napoleon was grander and more distant, and even more prudish. In Josephine’s day he would banter with the ladies and on occasion talk of past conquests. Now, young men were afraid of addressing ladi
es in his presence for fear of being ticked off for what he assumed were salacious proposals, or even just frivolous talk. ‘I do not think there could have been a court where the morals were more pure,’ recalled Hortense. The notoriously homosexual Cambacérès was instructed to pay regular ostentatious visits to an actress in the Palais-Royal, which fooled nobody and only provoked ribaldry.24
Napoleon’s civil list and other sources of income (he was not averse to diverting some taxes and state revenues to his private treasury) made him the richest monarch in Europe, with a vast stack of gold in the vault of the Tuileries which allowed him to adorn his court with unprecedented splendour. His views of himself and of France were well reflected in his public works and monuments, which were increasingly grandiose and closely bound to his person. He had been so struck by the magnificent royal palace in Madrid that on his return he instructed Fontaine to draw up plans for the aggrandisement of the Louvre, which he wanted ‘to equal in magnificence everything he had seen’, and to incorporate a church dedicated to St Napoleon. He also gave instructions for the former royal residences of Rambouillet, Meudon and Chambord to be restored to splendour, along with more than forty other palaces around the empire. When Fontaine came up with a plan for the Louvre which involved linking up the two extended wings, Napoleon protested. ‘What is great is always beautiful,’ he declared, ‘and I cannot agree to dividing a space whose principal feature is its extent.’ Instead, the space was embellished with the triumphal arch of the Carrousel, on which were placed the four horses of St Mark’s in Venice, drawing a Roman chariot in which the spirit of flattery had led to a statue of himself being placed. Even he balked at this, and had it removed. No such restraint was in evidence when, as soon as it was known that Marie-Louise was pregnant, he put in hand plans for a monumental palace complex for his presumed son on the heights of Chaillot.25
This infatuation with all things aristocratic and the accent on grandeur worried most of those who had helped bring Napoleon to power and worked with him at rebuilding a France that would incorporate the best of all worlds. Even Cambacérès, despite being bedecked with imperial and Austrian decorations, was uneasy. The country seemed to them to be drifting back to a mongrel version of the ancien régime. Yet those who had come of age under the empire did not share such reservations, and the symbols of Napoleon’s power and glory made them feel proud to be French and to serve him.26
The departure of Fouché from the centre of political life broke yet another link with the Revolution, and not just because of his Jacobin past, which had acted as a sort of guarantee against a Bourbon restoration. As had been the case with Talleyrand, his presence at the centre of public affairs and his ability to act as a restraining influence on Napoleon had provided a dose of wisdom to his conduct. Cynical and often perfidious as it was, his method of policing had been based on surveillance rather than punishment, on making people behave because they thought they were being watched rather than on the detention of suspects. This light touch changed overnight with the appointment in his place of Savary, who admitted to being astonished on taking over at how little real power he found at his disposal. He also found very little information, as Fouché had deftly removed or destroyed all his more sensitive papers.27
‘I inspired fear in everyone; people started packing their bags and talking of exile, imprisonment and worse still,’ wrote Savary. ‘I do not think that an outbreak of the plague on one of our coasts would have caused more fear than my appointment to the ministry of police.’ This was hardly surprising. He was a strict executor of Napoleon’s wishes, which were growing increasingly despotic. On his return from Vienna after Wagram, he had reorganised the workings of the courts in the interests of what he saw as efficiency, and in March 1810 he re-established prisons of state in which people could be locked up without trial, in effect reinstating the infamous lettre de cachet and creating half a dozen new Bastilles. According to Savary, there were just over 600 inmates, a significant number of them ‘deviants’ of one kind or another whose families preferred to avoid the publicity of a trial.28
The Penal Code, introduced that year, made assemblies of twenty or more illegal, although religious confraternities and Freemasonry were exempt. There was also a growth of scientific societies around the country. But the number of theatres, where the themes of plays could only too easily suggest unfavourable parallels and provoke discussion, was reduced. Although he supposedly instructed Savary to ‘treat men of letters well’, Napoleon tightened censorship. His reactions to any disorder or infraction had grown more peremptory, and included in one case ordering soldiers to be shot for no more than a drunken brawl. Yet when a young man from Saxony turned up in Paris and after being arrested confessed to the intention of assassinating him, Napoleon instructed that he be locked up with plenty of books to read so he could cool off, and released him after a few weeks.29
Napoleon was still capable of showing his human side – usually with people of the lower orders. When they were caught by rain during the tour of the Low Countries the imperial party took shelter in a farmhouse whose owner, not knowing who his guests were, sat in his armchair while Napoleon and the others perched on benches, and proceeded to talk freely, dispensing old man’s wisdom. The emperor chatted with him affably, and it was only as they were leaving that he gave an inkling of who he was, by offering to provide a dowry for the man’s daughter. He often did this when travelling, dispensing gifts to astonished serving girls and grooms at wayside inns.
Nor did he forget those he loved. He set up Maria Walewska in a townhouse in Paris elegantly furnished in the Empire style, gave her a villa in Boulogne, and provided for their son by giving him estates in the kingdom of Naples. ‘No sovereign has ever given more than the Emperor, yet none has left so many resentful,’ remarked Chaptal, explaining that the manner in which he gave smacked of charity or reward rather than generosity, but the former minister was by then ill-disposed to him. Josephine turned to Napoleon whenever she needed help or money with the plea, ‘Bonaparte, you promised never to abandon me; now I need your advice’, and he never failed her. ‘He would charm everyone around him whenever he let himself go to his bonhomie,’ recalled Hortense. Even Metternich had to admit that in private or in intimate company, Napoleon’s conversation ‘possessed a charm difficult to define’. He could also be clear-sighted and candid. One day, he asked those around him what people would say when he died. As each began saying something flattering, he interrupted them. ‘People will just say: Ah! at last we can breathe! We’re rid of him, what joy!’ He also admitted that his becoming emperor was really something of ‘an accident’.30
But that did not correspond to any sense of humility. Napoleon noticed that when writing to her father his wife addressed her letters to ‘His Sacred Imperial Majesty’, and he asked Metternich about this form he had not come across before. Metternich explained that it was accepted usage when addressing the Holy Roman Emperor. ‘It is a fine and fitting custom,’ said Napoleon with a solemn air. ‘Power derives from God, and it is only on account of that that it can be placed beyond the reach of men. In time, I shall adopt the same title.’31
Metternich had attempted to resolve the conflict with the Pope, but Napoleon’s views had hardened. To the sculptor Antonio Canova, whom he had brought to Paris to make a bust of Marie-Louise, he said irritably that ‘these priests want to control everything, meddle in everything and be masters of everything’. He reasoned that St Peter had chosen Rome rather than Jerusalem because that was the metropolis of the time, but Rome had fallen, and the papacy had ended up being a minor state subject to the temporal requirements of the rulers of ‘a very small corner of Italy’, and that it was the resulting political entanglements which had led to the Reformation. He argued that the Pope should move to Paris, and in preparation began rebuilding the archiepiscopal palace beside Notre Dame, moving the Vatican archives and, in January 1810, forcing the cardinals of the Sacred College to take up residence in the new Rome.32
Meanwhile, in the former Papal States the French authorities dissolved monasteries and convents, rationalised parishes, and expelled recalcitrant priests and monks. The text relating to their incorporation into the French Empire underlines ‘the independence of the imperial throne from any authority on earth’. The custom among Catholic monarchies which maintained the belief that they ruled by the grace of God had been to defer to His vicar on earth, the Pope. Napoleon had paid lip service to this by insisting on the Pope being present at his coronation, even though he then still based his right to rule on the will of the nation. Now he needed neither the Pope nor the nation. Arguing the point with Fesch at Fontainebleau one evening, Napoleon led him out onto the terrace and, pointing to the heavens, asked him whether he could see God, to which the cardinal replied in the negative. ‘Well, then, you had better keep quiet,’ snapped the emperor. ‘I can see my star, and that is what guides me.’33
35
Apogee
Napoleon would later blame his marriage to an Austrian archduchess for his downfall, referring to her as ‘that bank of roses obscuring the abyss’. There was something in that, as its joys did distract him and its fruits deceived him, with fatal consequences. He was besotted with his new bride, and seemed to revel in the possession of this fresh, young, submissive yet lusty girl with her imperial blood.1
In a report to his emperor, Metternich had characterised Napoleon as a ‘good family man, with those accents which one finds most often in middle-class Italian families’, but the Latin paternalism had given way to deference and become tinged with Austrian Gemütlichkeit. He ordered paintings of battles fought against the Austrians to be removed from the imperial palaces, and commissioned views of Schönbrunn and Laxenburg, where Marie-Louise had grown up. Where he had chided Josephine for being late, he waited obsequiously for his new bride. He who had never spent more than twenty minutes at table now sat patiently as she munched her way through seven courses. She was bored by the tragedies of Corneille and Racine that he loved, so he sat through comedies that he despised. He was so deferential that she confessed to Metternich that she thought he was a little in awe of her.2
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