allow. She is watchful and conciliatory. He has installed her in the
Trianon; gives her one million a year. No one understands why she is
so thrifty. Some use the word “miserly.” But she maintains that “we
Corsicans have experienced many revolutions; all this may come to an
end; what will then happen to my children? It is better that they should
come to their mother, than go to strangers who might leave them in the
lurch.” From time to time she holds a reception, where she carries
herself with natural dignity, and far more regally than many of her
children who wear the royal crown. If any one haggles as to the price
of the beads with which she works, she smiles and says: “No, you can’t
impose upon me. I do not play the princess as my daughters do.” Though
she is the mother of the Emperor, and of kings and princes, she laments
that not a single trustworthy person is in her immediate entourage. She
only unbends over a game of reversi with old friends of hers; or when she
chats of an evening with her faithful servant, discussing “the happy days
gone by.... They all say that I am the happiest of mothers. In truth I am
always full of worry. Every news item makes me tremble lest the Emperor
lie dead upon the battle-field.”
On Sundays, following the tradition of her patrician ancestors, she
dines with her children at the Tuileries. She does not invariably obey
the Emperor; and when he constrains her, she is resentful. No doubt
he is aware that she is too proud to accept the relationship which
circumstances have established between them; and whenever he looks in the
mirror, he cannot fail to see his increasing personal resemblance to his
mother, in forehead, mouth, eyes, and hands. Sometimes he teases her:
“Do you find life at court tedious? Look at your daughters! Why do you
hoard your money? You ought to spend freely!”
“You’d better allow me two millions instead of one, if that is what you
want. But it’s my nature to be thrifty.”
She has as keen an eye for the detection of flatterers as Napoleon
himself, and gently warns him against them from time to time. Though
she never asks anything for herself, she will often enough beg him to
help the numerous Corsicans who come to visit her, and thus does her
best for whilom family friends. Once, indeed, and late in the day,
she puts in a plea for something she has much at heart. She would like
Ajaccio to become the capital of Corsica, instead of Corte. A stirring of
family pride! The Emperor issues a decree to this effect, understanding
perfectly well what moves her, and says: “My mother was born to reign
over a kingdom.”
But she cannot get him to do anything for Lucien. “I love him more than
all the others,” she says, “because he’s not been so lucky.” The Emperor
is adamant: “No feelings of affection can weigh against reasons of State.
I will only accept as relatives, those who serve me. He who does not soar
with me, ceases to belong to my family.”
XIII
At Paris, in his study, Napoleon has a silent witness of his activities;
a bronze bust of Frederick the Great.
He had grown up in the days when the renown of the last of the famous
commanders was still fresh; and, indeed, he had become lieutenant before
the king died. Like all the generals of the day, in the art of war he was
a disciple of Frederick. He had not yet come into personal contact with
the Prussian army, but he still had considerable respect for it, although
Frederick’s immediate successor had won no laurels against the soldiers
of France. He knew Frederick William III. to be foolish and weak; and
if, none the less, he tried to induce the Prussian ruler to enter into
an alliance, and hoped to turn Prussia’s antagonism towards Austria and
Russia to his own uses, it was because he continued to entertain an
unavowed respect for the only foreign army in Europe which had covered
itself with glory during the eighteenth century. But when Prussia
showed him, not her strongest side, the military, but her weakest, the
political, his respect waned.
In the previous year, before Austerlitz, he had offered Frederick
William an alliance. After Trafalgar, when Francis and Alexander were
courting Prussia, and after Austerlitz, when the indications were in
favour of France, the weakling monarch continued to vacillate, always
hoping to better his position by neutrality. Then, when the Emperor was
stronger than ever before, the Prussian ruler seized the first pretext
for making warlike preparations against France. Had not Napoleon violated
Prussian neutrality last year by marching through Ansbach?
What has really decided the king’s attitude is the mood of the democrats,
in conjunction with his dread of mortified national pride, and, in
especial, with his uncertainty as to the loyalty of some of his bellicose
generals. In Nuremberg, a bookseller had been tried by court martial and
shot for publishing a lampoon against the French army and circulating
it in places which, in accordance with the terms of the treaty, were
legitimately occupied by French troops. The decision of the court was
formally just; but the indignation it aroused, being moral, was juster.
The Emperor realised this, and wanted to avoid war. He proposed a mutual
withdrawal of troops. Through the mouth of his envoy, he explained that
Frederick William had only to say whether the presence of French soldiers
in Westphalia annoyed him. Then he wrote personally to the king: “I hold
unalterably to our alliance.... But if your answer shows me that on your
side you repudiate this alliance, and put your trust solely in the power
of arms, then indeed I shall be compelled to make war. Nevertheless,
battles and victories notwithstanding, my feelings will remain unchanged.
Since I regard this war as a wicked one, I shall, even then, propose
peace.”
In private, however, with mingled feelings of anger and contempt, he says
hard things about Prussia. He cannot believe that country to be so mad as
it seems. “Its cabinet is despicable; its sovereign a weakling; its court
ruled by young officers who will risk anything.”
A fortnight before the outbreak of war, he still finds it impossible to
believe in its coming.
He is mistaken. The men of noble birth who officer the Prussian army,
the men who, under Frederick the Great, defeated France, and were
subsequently defeated by France, want to rehabilitate themselves. The
middle classes are inspired with ardent nationalist sentiments. The
Prussians are ready to “risk anything”; their eyes are fixed on a
protectress in whom they trust. The queen of Prussia is a passionate
advocate of war, for the tsar is now allied with Prussia, and during his
stay in Berlin she has recognised in him the manliness that is lacking in
her husband. After Austerlitz, Alexander had promptly withdrawn into his
own realm, to await a more favourable opportunity. Now the opportunity
had come.
We learn from Talleyrand that Napoleon was full of secret disquietude at
having to draw the sword once more. He had been dazzled by the feats of
the great Frederick’s soldiers. Never before had he fought against an
army famous in story. “I fancy we shall find them tougher metal than the
Austrians.” All the more reason for getting quickly across the Rhine! A
week after the beginning of the advance, he gains his first victory. At
Saalfeld, the best of the Prussians fell, Prince Louis Ferdinand, the
first and finest blossom shattered in the first storm.
Confusion prevails among the Prussians, and the king contributes to its
spread. General Scharnhorst had advised him to attack two weeks earlier,
but the irresolute ruler had waited for the French offensive. The duke of
Brunswick is commander-in-chief; but instead of leaving the management
of the campaign to this officer, at the last moment the king comes to
the fighting front. “We don’t know whether the headquarters should be
called royal or ducal.” The duke obeys the king when he ought to command.
Questions of precedence necessitate the division of the forces into
three army corps, for Prince Hohenlohe, who is a reigning prince, cannot
possibly fight under a duke. Once more the enemy holds out the hand
of friendship. Two days before the main battle, and while confident of
victory, Napoleon writes:
“I do not wish to derive any advantage from the folly of your advisers,
whose blunders in statesmanship amaze Europe.... Well, we are at
war.... But why should we lead our subjects to slaughter one another?
I care nothing for a victory that is bought with the lives of many of
my children. If I were at the beginning of my career, and had reason
to dread misadventure in battle, I should have no right to use such
language. But, Sire, you will be defeated. You will sacrifice the
quiet of your days and the lives of your subjects without the smallest
justification.... I have nothing to gain from Your Majesty; I do not
want and never have wanted anything from you. This war is unwise! I know
that my letter may wound your royal sensibilities, but the circumstances
make bluntness essential. I am telling you what I really think....
Restore peace to yourself and your territories. Even if I could never
be your ally, you will always find in me a man, ... whose greatest wish
it is never to shed blood by making war with princes who are not the
adversaries of his industry, his commerce, and his policy.”
Louise, who has followed her husband to the front, is a woman with more
peaceful instincts than is pleasing to the ambition of the generals on
the headquarters staff. When the letter is read, however, she agrees
with their scornful view that Napoleon writes as he does because he is
afraid of a catastrophe to himself. Is she, then, unable to realise that
destiny has placed her among these men to-day, that she may influence
her weak-willed husband in the direction of a humane settlement of the
dispute? She cannot see it! Napoleon is nothing but “an infernal monster
risen out of the mire,” and to-morrow he must fall!
“My affairs march very well,” writes this monster, meanwhile, to his
wife. “Everything is going just as I should like. The king and the
queen are in Erfurt. If they want to see a battle, they will have this
gruesome delight. I feel splendid. Although I am travelling from eighty
to a hundred miles a day, I have put on weight. I go to bed at eight in
the evening, get up at midnight, and remember when I do so that you have
not yet retired to rest.” The last night before the battle he refuses to
go to bed. At three in the morning, one of his officers urges him to take
a nap, but he exclaims: “Impossible! I have my plans here” (he touches
his forehead), “but nothing yet in my maps!” Then he quickly explains
the whole plan. “Do you understand?... To horse with you and find me a
place from which I can get a commanding view of the battle-field. I shall
be there at six.” Then he throws himself on the camp-bed, and instantly
falls asleep.
In the course of that night, the Prussian headquarters staff is informed
by its scouts that remarkable movements are going on among the French
troops. Oh, well, to-morrow will be time enough to discuss the matter!
But before the day dawns, the Emperor has ridden along the front, has
fired his guard with enthusiasm, has recalled the day of Austerlitz.
He defeats the Prussians near Jena, while simultaneously Davoust is
routing a superior force of the enemy at Auerstädt.
When the valiant duke of Brunswick is fatally wounded, no one ventures to
take over the command. They all lose their heads, and what is left of the
army of the great Frederick flees in disorder through Saxony eastward.
“Chère amie, I did some fine manœuvring against the Prussians, and won
a great victory yesterday. Twenty thousand prisoners, and we took about
a hundred cannon and colours.... Have been camping here for a couple of
days. I’m feeling splendid. Farewell. Take good care of yourself, and
love me.”
In Weimar, he meets the reigning duchess. Charles Augustus, the duke,
has been in a warlike frame of mind for the last twenty years. He is
Prussophil, and, in defiance of advice, has joined issue with the
Emperor. Now, as Prussian general, he is in full flight after the
disaster at Jena. No one knows his whereabouts. The court has also fled
from Weimar. Only the duchess and her minister, Goethe, remain behind.
When the Emperor sees the lady for the first time, he says: “I am sorry
for you! How could the duke ...!” But to his amazement (for he is always
against women’s rule—in especial, when the woman happens to be a German)
the duchess answers him with so much clarity, simplicity, and dignity,
explains the duke’s friendship with Prussia in so steadfast a manner,
that he is shaken, behaves courteously, returns in the evening in order
to have a long talk with her, and, after having vowed the annihilation of
her dynasty, promises her that nothing shall be done to injure the duchy.
Why?
Because this woman has never interfered in politics, has not now affected
a knowledge she does not possess, but in simple camaraderie has spoken
on behalf of her absent husband, and with princely demeanour has pleaded
for her country. She has made use neither of cajolery nor anger, but has
kept the golden mean between pride and deference becoming to a conquered
monarch. Years afterwards, the Emperor remembered this woman who by her
noble bearing had saved her country and her dynasty.
In Berlin, he meets another woman. Count Hatzfeld, who has been
negotiating with the conqueror on behalf of Berlin, writes indiscreetly
to one of the discredited generals, and gives him details concerning the
strength of the French troops. His letter is intercepted. The Emperor, in
a rage, declares he is to be shot as a spy. Berthier is depressed by the
command; Rapp endeavours to soften Napoleon. Countess Hatzfeld is brought
to see him; she falls at his feet. He invites her to Potsdam: “When I
showed her the count’s letter she answered me guilelessly, with a sob,
and with deep emotion: ‘Yes, that is certainly his handwriting.’ As she
read the document the tone of her voice moved me to my innermost being.
I pitied her. You see,” he concludes his report to Josephine, “I love
good, simple, and gentle women.”
Love? There stands the man of might; the countess is naught to him as far
as her womanhood goes; hardly has he noticed her figure or her dress. But
these natural passions, womanly pleadings, tears, and silences, move him
deeply. He throws the letter into the fire: “The proof I had has been
burned. Your husband is safe.”
Thus does Napoleon the Conqueror deal with two German women whose
husbands have fought against him. He deals leniently with them because
their conduct appeals to his heart.
He dislikes Queen Louise. A politician, that woman, who has driven her
country and her consort into a disastrous enterprise, who has egged this
quiet-loving man into war when he could have had peace with honour.
Napoleon execrates such a woman. Since she seizes every opportunity to
spit fire at him, he determines to strip her of all her womanly dignity.
He jeers at her in official bulletins: “She is a woman with beautiful
features but little brain.... She must be terribly tortured by pangs
of conscience for all the suffering she has brought upon her country.
Her husband is a man of honour who desired happiness and peace for his
people.”
He has made a triumphal entry into Berlin. His suite is brilliantly
dressed, but he is as simply clad as ever, and his hat is adorned with
a cockade worth about a penny. Nothing interests him so keenly as Sans
Souci. He holds the sword of the great Frederick in his hands, and takes
it away as a trophy more priceless than any other he could ever find in
his whole life. He would not exchange it for the throne of Prussia. But
he heartily despises Frederick’s descendants, and publicly attacks the
queen:
“In the queen’s rooms was found the tsar’s picture, which he himself had
given her. Also there was her correspondence with the king.... These
documents go to prove how unhappy those princes can be who permit their
wives to interfere in affairs of State. Notes and State papers reeked of
musk, and lay beneath ribbons and laces and other fal-lals of the toilet.”
An unworthy tone! He seems to have forgotten the patriotic impulse of
the queen. If, however, we compare these taunts with what the best and
greatest of contemporary Prussian statesmen, the non-Prussian Baron vom
Stein, wrote about Queen Louise, we can understand the Emperor’s humour,
though hardly excuse it.
Serious considerations restrain him from destroying the house of
Hohenzollern, though he had already drafted a decree to dethrone the
king. Napoleon has to bear the tsar in mind. In Berlin he thinks in
terms of Europe as a whole: “On the Elbe and on the Oder we have won our
India, our Spanish colonies, and our Cape of Good Hope.” The grandiose
words as yet only announce the start of the voyage; but with mighty
strokes of the oar he is now to round the cape of his hopes. In the
castle at Charlottenburg he dictates the greatest, most un-bloody, and
most dangerous of all his declarations of war: Charlemagne closes all the
harbours of Europe against English ships. If the island cannot be reached
by his sword? Well, henceforward, Europe shall be placed out of her
reach! All merchandise, parcels, postal communications, etc., from and to
England and her colonies are to be held up; every Englishman at large on
the Continent is now a prisoner of war.
How is the carrying-out of the scheme to be supervised? Hitherto, action
has always followed close upon the heels of thought. Now, he has to
make treaties with various States, and, first of all, with Russia and
Austria. Austria has fragments of the sometime realm of Poland within
her frontiers; but Russia wants them for herself; Poland, tossed between
the two, pays allegiance to neither. As to a god, the Poles turn to the
Emperor. He, the champion of the freedom of the peoples, must come to
their aid and free them. What is to be done? How does Napoleon solve the
Polish problem?
“Shall I set up the throne of Poland anew, and thus restore a great
nation to life? God alone, who has the fashioning of all things in his
hands, can solve this riddle.” Words of Delphic cunning, which he sends
forth throughout Poland. God alone sees the smile with which he signs
the proclamation! In addition he takes three measures. He demands that
the Poles shall provide troops, for “not until you have an army of forty
thousand men will you be worthy of the name of Nation.” Next he proposes
to the Austrians an exchange of Galicia for Prussian Silesia. But the
real key to the Polish problem he fishes out of the Bosphorus, for he
tells the sultan to drive the Russians out of Moldavia, and to meet him,
the Emperor, on the Dniester; thereby he hopes to bind, not only Russia,
but also the trembling Austria, to the lower Danube.
There he sits in Sans Souci, the ancient candelabra in Frederick’s study
scintillate over his head, Voltaire’s picture smiles sideways, through
the wraith, at his great fellow-countryman. He sits alone at his game of
chess, calculates the moves of his unseen opponent, his glance takes in
wider and wider circles; suddenly the traits of his new ancestor suffer a
change, the big blond beard vanishes, the nose is flatter, the eyes lose
some of their confident glance, then become bolder again: instead of the
great Charles, he is facing the great Alexander. Yes, now, indeed, he
will conquer England in India! World dominion hovers before his eyes.
A new opponent leaps on to the board. Couriers bring the news of a revolt
in Spain. He pales. The whole game is imperilled. Once more Napoleon sees
clearly that he who would vanquish England must gain Russia’s friendship.
But in order to conquer Russia or to win her over to his side, he needs a
fulcrum. He has one ready to hand: Poland in revolt. Napoleon journeys to
Warsaw.
While in imagination he had, during these weeks, been weighing the fate
of continents, his heart had felt lonely. Yet he did not trouble himself
about women. Only to his wife did he write gallant things: “I love you,
and long for you.... These Polish women [in Posen] are all Frenchwomen in
their hearts. But for me there is only one woman. Do you know who she is?
I would tell you what she is like, only I should have to flatter her too
much, so that you could recognise yourself in the description. Seriously,
my heart can say naught but good of her. Oh, these long nights, all
alone!”
Josephine, with the keenness of a foxhound, senses a rival under these
cajoleries. But she has no reason, as yet, to be jealous, or to make so
long a journey. He answers her that “the agitation of your letter tells
me that you beautiful women know of no limits to your powers. What you
wish must come to pass. I, on the other hand, recognise that I am the
most enslaved of men. My master has no mercy on me, for my master is the
nature of things.”
Hardly has he finished touching upon these airy trifles in weighty
words, when a courier brings him tidings of the great consequences of a
trifling affair: the beauty to whom Caroline had introduced him in the
previous winter, and who was expecting a child before he went away, has
been confined. At last! It is then proved that he does not lack the power
which Dame Nature grants to other men! A great gift from above. A boy. He
turns to his intimate and exclaims with the ingenuous delight of a youth:
“Duroc! I’ve got a son!”
XIV
The brilliantly lighted ball-room forms a background where Poland
displays her greatest beauty and her most precious jewels. This is the
evening of evenings. In the old palace of Poland’s kings at Warsaw, the
Emperor of the French is to be shown the calibre of the nation that has
been suffering so long. Will he admire the national dance, its music and
its figures? Will the eyes of the ladies ravish him, those eyes which are
pools of Slavic melancholy? Will the flattery of the speeches or the
idolising comparisons appearing in the newspapers make his heart as wax?
Such, according to the sanguine, are the questions upon which hang the
fate of the nation. The procession has passed by; he has spoken to many
in cheerful vein; now he is standing in a recess, dividing his attention
between his interlocutor and the dancers. He is thinking of Paris, where,
for seven years, he has never failed to be in January.
[Illustration: Bonaparte in 1802, as First Consul. Engraving by Alexandre
Tardieu. After a drawing by Jean Baptiste Isabey.]
Suddenly his gaze is focused on a special point, and he forgets to carry
on the conversation. A hundred watchful eyes follow the glance of the
huntsman. Who is the quarry? A little later he approaches a group, asks
for the names of those composing it, and smilingly, with a courtliness of
manner rarely shown by him on public occasions, he draws the lady of his
choice out of the circle of her companions. She is a gentle, fair-haired
beauty, dainty and small, has blue eyes, appears to be of a yielding
disposition, and is eighteen years of age. She is simpler in her dress
than any of the others, and her behaviour is correspondingly quiet and
without display or the lures of coquetry. The Emperor chooses her as
partner in a contra-dance, delights in her grace and her lovely voice,
finds her broken French bewitching. While she smiles and is covered with
confusion, her name is whispered from room to room throughout the palace:
Countess Walewska.
“Who is she?” asks Napoleon later of his friend Duroc. She is the
daughter of an ancient line, the family so impoverished that the lady has
been married off to a wealthy old count whose youngest grandchild is ten
years older than the new wife.
“I had eyes only for you,” he writes to the countess next day. “I admired
only you, and longed to be with you alone. Send me an answer quickly, in
order that the fire which is consuming me may be appeased. N.” But the
messenger, Duroc, returns with neither answer nor tidings of any sort.
The Emperor is nonplussed. Something quite new. Twelve years ago the
brigadier general had had such a rebuff. But Napoleon, never. Have not
all women, whether princesses or actresses, 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: