dictator’s private preserve. Legitimacy is the rock on which he will be
shipwrecked. Why should he not choose Countess Walewska whom he loves?
Or, if the empress is to be a Frenchwoman, why not a daughter of one of
those heroes to whom he has given kingdoms? He has shaken the old world
to its foundations; has with his own hands placed two crowns on his
head; has kept kings of ancient lineage waiting in his ante-rooms; has
dethroned one such, and placed an innkeeper’s son upon the vacant throne.
Has he done all these things that to-day, debarred from the choice of the
woman of his heart, on the prowl for an heir, he must “adapt his actions
to the customs of his own century”—customs which hitherto he has defied
like a demigod?
But no such unconventional possibilities are discussed in these cold,
imperial halls, for one and all are against a Frenchwoman. Eugene and
Talleyrand are for Austria. Murat demurs, saying that Marie Antoinette
had brought bad luck to France. Some voice the advantages of a Russian
alliance. Others favour Saxony. The Emperor listens to their views,
closes the sitting, and does what he has already made up his mind to do.
That same evening he sends a message to Vienna. The only one present
at the council who saw clearly was the minister who had strongly urged
the claims of Russia, but who did not venture to utter his real reasons
except in private; “Within two years, we shall certainly be at war with
both the monarchies with whose ruling house the Emperor does not ally
himself by marriage—and Austria is the only one of the three a war with
which would not be dangerous!”
By the Emperor’s instructions, the court of St. Petersburg is informed
that he has been kept waiting too long. Furthermore, it would be
inconvenient to have a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church in the
Tuileries. Finally, he has been informed “that Grand Duchess Anna, who
is fifteen years old, is not yet ripened to womanhood. Inasmuch as, in
young girls, two years elapse between the appearance of the first signs
of womanhood and complete maturity, this will not suit the aims of the
Emperor, who does not wish to be married for three years before he can
have a child.” This gynecological excursus is the last we hear of the
Russian wooing which had begun so inauspiciously in Erfurt.
But the Habsburgs are a prolific family, so that he may regard an
Austrian princess as practically guaranteed against barrenness. When he
learns that the mother of his chosen bride has given birth to thirteen
children, that one of her ancestresses has had seventeen, and another
actually twenty-six, the Emperor exclaims: “That’s the kind of womb I
want to marry!” There could be no doubt about the answer to his proposal;
Francis would accept it, and his eighteen-year-old daughter would
comply.... Acceptance is taken for granted in the first letter of his
courtship, which the Emperor writes with his own hand, legibly in places,
for it is penned with Méneval’s aid, and with more pains than might be
gathered from an inspection of the schoolboy script:
“Chère Cousine, The brilliant qualities which distinguish your person
have aroused in us the desire to serve you and to honour you. Inasmuch
as we are approaching the emperor, your father, with the request that he
will entrust us with Your Imperial Highness’ happiness, may we venture to
hope that you will graciously accept the sentiments which move us to this
step. Dare we flatter ourselves that you are not deciding on this step
solely from a sense of duty and filial obedience?... If Your Imperial
Highness has no more than a trace of inclination towards us, we shall
carefully cherish this sentiment, and make it our supreme task to be
agreeable to you always and in all things, so that we may look forward to
the happiness of winning your whole heart....”
Did ever a great genius write a more preposterous letter? He knows
perfectly well that her acceptance will be dictated by filial obedience
and nothing more; that she cannot possibly have a trace of liking for the
devil who, during the years of her childhood, has been despoiling her
father of one province after another, so that she has learned to cross
herself at the sound of his name. He knows that he has better things to
do, that he has other supreme tasks, than to make himself agreeable to a
little goose, who is not distinguished by any other quality than by the
luck of being born a Habsburg; who is neither beautiful nor wise, neither
brave nor passionate. Yet the equivocal nature of his position constrains
Napoleon, who has never asked a favour, to write such a letter as the
foregoing!
With the gesture of a sultan, he gives to his friend Berthier (who is to
woo for him by proxy in Vienna) tokens of affection for his bride: his
miniature set in diamonds, and jewellery worth one-and-a-half-millions.
But at the proxy wedding in the Hofburg, Napoleon is represented by the
bride’s uncle, Archduke Charles, whom he has worsted in a dozen battles.
The Emperor, meanwhile, gives more attention to clothing and furniture
than to affairs of State; orders for Marie Louise a trousseau to the tune
of five millions, for what she is bringing with her has cost only half a
million; studies all the details of Marie Antoinette’s journey, lest the
Habsburgs should be able to plume themselves on breaches of etiquette;
orders fashionable coats from his tailor, and buckled shoes from his
shoemaker; goes out hunting, rides vigorously, in the hope of sweating
off his fat; even finds that his dancing days are not yet over.
While on her way to Paris, Marie Louise receives a love letter, quite
illegible, for all she can make out is the capital N. of the signature;
flowers greet her wherever she halts for the night; in Compiègne she is
expecting to be received by the terrible man whom she is to wed; he is
waiting there for her with all his family.
But suddenly, with a surge of vigorous youth, the firm will and the
fierce impatience of the revolutionist break through this hedge of
antiquated formalities. Laying aside his new embroidered coat, and
donning his old uniform, he jumps into a calash undecorated with armorial
bearings, and drives to meet the bridal procession. There it is; the
horses are being changed in a downpour of rain. He wants to take Marie
Louise by surprise, but her master-of-the-horse, recognising him,
exclaims, “His Majesty”; so the little coup fails to come off. In a
moment he is in the carriage beside her, dismisses the lady-in-waiting,
kisses his bride, laughing the while, for he is wet through. In her
embarrassment, she finds a pretty phrase: “Your portrait does not flatter
you, Sire!”
“She is by no means beautiful,” he meditates, as he takes stock of her.
“Marked with smallpox, though not badly, thick lips; watery blue eyes;
full-bosomed for her years; but fresh and young.”
With disgust, that evening, the masters of the ceremonies see their
whole programme, which has been rehearsed for weeks in advance, torn to
tatters. The meeting with the imperial family has been effected with
scant formality; all come and go as they please; the girls who present
bouquets must cut their compliments short, for every one is wet and cold;
supper is improvised, with Caroline as third at table. At one in the
morning the whole company retires to rest. But the Emperor has taken his
uncle the cardinal aside, and has asked Fesch, as an authority upon these
matters, whether Marie Louise is not already his wife, thanks to the
proxy marriage in Vienna. “Yes, Sire, according to civil law,” answers
the priest, foreseeing what is about to happen.
Next morning the Emperor has breakfast for two brought to the empress’
bedside. Within an hour all Compiègne knows.
By this night attack, made on the spur of the moment, Napoleon conquers
the world of legitimacy after the same fashion as he has conquered it
in the field, taking the Habsburg fortress by storm, as beseems his
reputation.
With a mischievous double meaning, he writes next day to his unsuspecting
father-in-law: “She fulfils all my hopes, and we do not cease to give
one another proofs of the tender feelings that unite us. We suit one
another exceedingly well.... Allow me, therefore, to thank you for
this lovely gift.” Uncle Fesch does not give their union the blessing
of the Church until after they have made their imposing entry into
Paris. In Josephine’s case, he was eight years too late; this time the
sanctification has been delayed no more than a fortnight.
The Emperor finds his bride charming. “You should all marry Germans,” he
tells his intimates; “they are gentle, good, unspoiled, and as fresh as
roses.” He is delighted that she gets on well with his family. Domestic
peace is new to him. He graces the intimacies of the toilet with his
presence; pinches her cheeks caressingly; calls her his “bonne petite
animale.”
Two or three weeks later, there is news from Poland. The child conceived
during the weeks at Schönbrunn has been born—a boy. There is a strange
medley of feelings in Napoleon’s soul. From that same Austrian palace,
where he has stayed only in the absence of its rightful owner, has come
the new wife, who as yet gives no signs of capacity for doing her duty.
He vacillates; sends for the Polish countess. But, soon after this,
Marie Louise finds that she is with child. “The Emperor’s jubilation
almost passes description,” writes Metternich to Vienna. At this early
stage, the empress’ condition is solemnly announced to the Senate and the
nation; prayers for the successor to the throne are to be said; there is
to be a festival of rejoicing as sumptuous as those of pagan times.
When the lovely Walewska arrives, he gives her everything she can ask
for; sees the baby and fondles it; makes it a count of the Empire, with
the chancellor for guardian. But nothing beyond this unites the sometime
lovers. Napoleon has become a respectable married man.
In all respects, now, this man’s career seems to be transcending familiar
limitations, outstepping traditional horizons. Thus among the women who
have crossed his path new relationships begin. The Polish countess,
whose eyes Josephine would at one time have been glad to scratch out,
is invited to Malmaison. Walewska brings Josephine Napoleon’s son, that
son whose absence from her own womb decided Josephine’s fate. See the
group on the terrace. One of them is a grey-headed woman, who was born in
the West Indies, had a taste of prison, and then became empress of the
French. The other, young and blooming, was brought up in an impoverished
Polish noble family, was married off to a wealthy old man, and was then
switched into a new career through Napoleon’s chance glimpse of her at
a ball. Between them is the child of the man who had loved both and
forsaken both, that he might compel a stupid little Habsburg girl to
immortalise a name which had long ere this immortalised itself.
When the empress’ hour comes, he has to make a choice great as destiny
itself. Paris knows, France knows, that the young wife is in labour. All
are waiting for the heir; enemies are dreading him before he is born;
the common people, who at such moments are always dynastically inclined,
are praying for mother and child. Throughout the night Napoleon has
been watching by his wife’s bedside, but has withdrawn for a time. The
accoucheur brings him dread tidings: “The child is in a bad position;
there is danger to the life of both mother and infant!”
The whole structure of his dynastic schemes is tottering. What will he
say, this man of iron, when the doctor asks whether the first thought is
to be for the mother or for the child? Will he not answer that, before
all, it is necessary to save the child, for whose first cry millions
besides Napoleon are waiting? What does Marie Louise matter? When she has
borne him a healthy boy, she will have fulfilled her earthly mission.
Surely the Emperor can have no choice?
“Do exactly what you would do if an ordinary citizen’s wife were in
labour. The mother’s life comes first!”
Two hours later, however, the baby has been born, and the mother is
in good case. With rapt attention, Paris counts the cannon shots.
Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one—so far, it may only be a girl. But when the
twenty-second gun booms out, the whole city is in a frenzy of delight.
The crowd surrounding the old Bourbon palace cheers madly. The salute
is still thundering. The little lieutenant of artillery stands by the
window, mechanically noting the calibre of the guns from the pitch of the
gun-fire, glancing down upon the mutable many without—while his thoughts
reach far back into the past, and roam yet farther forward into the
future.
The groom-of-the-chambers sees that there are tears in the cold,
grey-blue eyes.
[Illustration: Napoleon as Emperor. Painting by Vigneux. Count Primoli
Collection.
(From the “Corpus Imaginum” of the Photographic Society, Charlottenburg.)]
BOOK FOUR
THE SEA
It is essential that this man shall be ruined!... But
since, here below everything takes place by natural causes,
the daimons trip him: thus, in the end, even Napoleon is
overthrown.—GOETHE.
I
The old struggle in Napoleon’s mind between mathematics and fantasy had
ripened. The issue of the struggle was now to decide the history of his
world dominion.
For now, at the climax of his career; fortified by his ties with the
Habsburgs, ties for whose sake he had broken the familiar associations
of years of married life; fortified by having a legitimate heir, whose
birth gave firm anchorage to his adventurer’s dynasty; having gained
the mastery over conspiracies, and having learned to dominate all the
political parties—he was once more free as he had been eleven years
earlier, when the victory of Marengo had safeguarded the tranquillity
he needed for the internal development of France. True, England was
unconquered; but Russia seemed still friendly. True, Spain was uncoerced;
but Europe from Reggio to Hammerfest was allied to France, this being a
euphemism for dependence on France. For the last time in his life, he was
free to make a great decision.
Had he been nothing more than a mathematician, he would have been content
with his calculations within the resuscitated realm of Charlemagne, and
dreams of world dominion would have yielded place before the reality
of the United States of Europe under France’s leadership. Had he been
nothing but a visionary, he would have aimed, like a new Alexander, to
march towards the Ganges; and England would have been merely a pretext
for his onslaught on India. But he was both mathematician and visionary,
and was therefore in danger of disavowing himself. For, as calculator, he
failed to grasp an eminently real factor which could not be expressed in
figures. The moods of un-uniformed men in Spain and in Germany could play
no part in the cipherings of a military commander who thought in terms
of army corps and big guns. Nevertheless such moods should have come
within the scope of his visions as a seer!
Thus during these decisive years, after the birth of his heir, and before
his next warlike designs have become active, his mind is alternately
dominated by his two fundamental impulses, and the whole future depends
upon which of the two will be supreme when the moment for action comes.
Will his awakened fantasy warn him that it is dangerous to brave the
anger of exasperated peoples, or will his calculating faculty disclose to
him the danger that will await him on the distant road to the East? What
will happen should he err in both respects? Then, indeed, his whole world
will go up in flames.
He feels that his powers are ripening. In addition to the two energies
we have been considering, a third is growing to maturity, the sense of
destiny. Words unheard before, or rarely expressed, now find voice: “I
feel that I am being driven towards an unknown goal. But as soon as I
have reached it, as soon as I no longer have an inexorable mission, an
atom will suffice to overthrow me. Till then, no human powers can effect
anything against me. The days are numbered.”
Truly they are numbered; and through these prophetic words there already
breathes the foreboding of an exit, although he does not know the way
thither. Now, on the path towards the tragical catastrophe, the clarity
of his inner vision is dimmed. Yet he himself speaks of the campaign
against Russia as the “fifth act,” though the full significance of the
term is not apparent to him. Tones like those of his youthful days
resound in the new harmony. “I have got to the end of everything,” he had
said when he was thirty, on the Nile. Now, at forty-three, he declares in
the Council of State: “All this will last as long as I do, and no longer.
Perhaps when I am dead, my son will think himself well off if he can be
sure of an income of forty thousand francs a year.”
But at the same time his ardour increases. Since those days when it
seemed to him that (thanks to the acceleration of genius) he had got to
the end of everything, since the days of the Egyptian campaign, he had
been guided by a religious faith that it was his destiny to become a
second Alexander. Now, when for the first time he is equipped with means
for the carrying out of his design, is he to annihilate his dream by
figures, which are not more potent in the world than dreams? When the
arch-chancellor wishes him a happy new year, he answers, as if suddenly
rejuvenated: “I must grow wise if you are to be able to repeat this
greeting thirty years hence.”
Napoleon never grew wise, but he was always clever. When he finds that
his commercial warfare is reacting to the detriment of his own country,
he disregards his own prohibitions, and grants licenses for the import
of certain raw materials and dyes from England, in part because they are
urgently needed for French industry, and in part because the articles
in question are among the requirements of Parisian luxury. Soon, in all
continental countries, huge sums are made by smugglers who import the
very colonial produce which the Emperor wishes to prevent his chief enemy
from marketing. These goods are then retailed at a great profit. Is the
smartest dealer in Europe to be robbed of his gains by smugglers? He
would rather have the business under his own control, so he imposes a
fifty per cent. duty on all the colonial produce his agents can find on
the Continent, and pouches these receipts for France. Since at the same
time he has all English woollen textiles that he can lay hands on burned,
he opens opportunities for illicit gains which are so large that for
their sake people will ignore the risks of draconian punishments. He has
to carry on a guerilla warfare, just as in Spain, though this time he is
fighting the nation of shopkeepers with trade weapons.
It is likewise a war of decrees. Since Paris has prohibited all trading
in English wares, London reciprocates by demanding from all neutral
countries enhanced dues for permission to call at the blockaded ports.
Paris counters this move by declaring that the vessels of neutrals which
shall call at the ports of London or of Malta, run the risk of capture
as prizes. London responds by sending her ships out under false colours,
and Paris thereupon has all merchantmen trading in Mediterranean waters
overhauled and searched. The American government forbids its citizens
to have business dealings with Europe, or even to have any private
intercourse with the Continent; but the Emperor promises all kinds of
privileges to the Americans if they will cease to call at English ports.
So paradoxical is the situation resulting from the endeavour to strangle
overseas trade, by which Napoleon had hoped to extort the freedom of the
seas!
The Emperor’s hopes are rising. The English pound sterling is still
quoted at seventeen francs, the English banks are failing, and in
parliament the opposition is against the continuance of the war. In spite
of this, his peace proposals are rejected. The disturbances in Spain are
at once the cause and the consequence of England’s defiant attitude.
There is still an army numbering a quarter million men stationed in
Spain; and, despite all endeavours, Wellington’s thirty thousand are not
driven out, for the bands of native insurrectionaries led by officers and
monks carry on unceasing guerilla warfare against the French invaders.
The Emperor’s quarrel with the pope stiffens the antagonism of the
monks. While French children on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees are
being taught that Napoleon is God’s vicegerent, Spanish children on the
southern slopes are learning that the Emperor is the devil incarnate and
that the murder of a Frenchman is a deed pleasing to the Almighty.
In so fanatical a land, where hardly any regular troops are left for the
French to fight against, Napoleon’s generals feel out of their element.
Disunion prevails. Masséna is sent against Portugal. At the same time,
Napoleon deprives Joseph of four provinces. When the king journeys to
Paris to demand the cancelling of the decree, the Emperor declares
that his brother has ceded these lands. Napoleon places a general to
administer each province, and appoints a marshal in supreme command. He
carries out this Roman system of ruling through military governors thus
ruthlessly and persistently because of his intense disappointment in the
rule of the members of his family to whom he has allotted crowns, and,
above all, in the behaviour of his brothers. Terrible battles, made more
ghastly by famine and disease, are meanwhile forcing Masséna to retreat.
The Emperor, in a fury, recalls him.
Will Napoleon at length realise that his presence is essential? Marshals,
officers, and, above all, the rank and file of the army, eagerly await
his coming. Full well does he know this; and yet he does not go. Does
he fear assassination at the hands of some fanatical Spaniard? Or is
it treachery at home that deters him; such conspiracies as those which
called him back to Paris so suddenly when he was encamped near Astorga?
Is he to get enmeshed in this southern corner of his empire at the moment
when the whole is at stake? What is Spain to him? He chooses the oldest
of his companions-in-arms: Marmont is sent to clear up the mess and bring
the campaign to an end.
The second kingly brother had, with good reason, thrown up his job.
Napoleon had deprived him of all the Dutch territory on the left bank of
the Rhine; had insisted upon the removal of the rest of the protective
duties against France; and (this was the worst of all) had angered the
Dutch, who are traders and seamen, by the measures he had compelled them
to take against England. The Emperor had expected both his brothers to
run counter to the currents of national feeling in their respective
kingdoms, underestimating alike the strength of popular sentiment and the
sense of honour of the two men he had forced to become monarchs. It would
have been easier for military governors to cope with the rising tide of
nationalism and to dispense with a feeling obligation towards the people
they ruled, than it was for kings burdened with historic crowns.
When Louis found it impossible to put up any longer with the Emperor’s
tutelage, he abdicated in favour of his younger son, and fled by night
from his kingdom for an unrevealed destination. Napoleon’s catchpolls
sought him far and wide in Europe, to discover him at length in Austria.
The Emperor was greatly enraged, yet he could not but see that he was
himself more to blame than Louis. He therefore made no attempt to punish,
but sent his own body physician to care for the fugitive, who had excused
the flight on the ground of illness. To his mother, the Emperor wrote
saying that there were tidings of Louis’ whereabouts. “You need not be
anxious; but his conduct has been of a kind which can only be explained
by his illness. Your very affectionate son, Napoleon.”