Fate had reserved another triumph for the ruler of France, the Emperor
Napoleon--the triumph that the empire by the people’s grace should be
converted and exalted into the empire by God’s grace. Pope Pius VII.,
full of thankfulness that Napoleon had re-established the Church in
France, and restored to the clergy their rights, had consented to come
to Paris for the sake of giving to the empire, created by the will
of the French people, the benediction of the Church, and in solemn
coronation to place the imperial crown on the head anointed by the hands
of God’s vice-gerent.
Bonaparte received this news with the lofty composure of an emperor who
finds it quite natural that the whole world should bow to his wishes,
and Josephine received it with the modesty and joyous humility of a
pious Christian. She desired above all things the blessing of God and of
the Church to rest upon this crown, whose possession had seemed to her
until now a spoliation, a sacrilege, and about which her conscience so
often reproached her. But when God’s vicegerent, when the Holy Father of
Christendom should himself have blessed her husband’s crown, and should
have made fast on Josephine’s brow the imperial diadem, then all blame
was removed, then the empress could hope that Heaven’s blessing would
accompany the new emperor and his wife!
But was it really Napoleon’s wish that Josephine should take part in
this grand ceremony of coronation? Did he wish that, like him, she
should receive from the hands of the pope the consecrated crown?
Such was the deep, important question which occupied, at the approaching
arrival of the pope, the young imperial court; a question, too,
which occupied Josephine’s mind, and also the whole family, and more
especially the sisters of Bonaparte.
Josephine naturally desired that it should be so, for this solemn
coronation would be a new bond uniting her to her husband, a new
guaranty against the evil which the empress’s foreboding spirit still
dreaded. But for the very same reasons her enemies prepared their
weapons to prevent Josephine from obtaining this new consecration and
this new glory, and harsh and bitter conflicts took place within the
inner circles of the imperial family on account of it, which on both
sides were carried on with the deepest animosity and obstinacy, but
finally to a complete triumph for Josephine.
Thiers, in his “History of the Consulate and of the Empire,” relates the
last scenes in this family quarrel:
“Napoleon vacillated between his affection for his wife and the secret
presentiments of his policy, when an occurrence took place which nearly
caused the sudden ruin of the unfortunate Josephine. Every one was in a
state of agitation about the new monarch--brothers, sisters, and allies!
In the solemnity which seemed to give to each a blessing, all desired to
perform parts adequate to their actual pretensions, and to their hopes
of the future. At the sight of this restlessness, and witnessing the
pretensions and claims to which Napoleon was exposed from one of his
sisters, Josephine, carried away by anxiety and jealousy, gave utterance
to an insulting suspicion against his sister and against Napoleon, a
suspicion which agreed with the most bitter calumnies of the royalist
emigrants. Napoleon grew violently angry, and, as his wrath mastered his
better feelings, he declared to Josephine that he wanted to be divorced
from her; that he would have to be, sooner or later, and that it was
therefore better to announce it on the spot, before other bonds should
unite them still closer together. He sent for his two adopted children,
communicated to them this decision, and thus produced on them a most
painful impression. Hortense and Eugene de Beauharnais declared with
a sad but unwavering determination that they would follow their mother
into the exile which was being prepared for her. Josephine manifested
a resigned and dignified sorrow. The contrast of their sorrow with the
satisfaction which the other portion of the imperial family manifested,
deeply lacerated Napoleon’s heart, and he relented; for he could not
consent to see the companion of his youth and her children, who had been
the objects of his deserved affection, made so unhappy by being forced
into exile. He took Josephine in his arms, told her with emotion that
he could never have the strength to part from her, even if policy itself
should dictate it; and he then promised her that she should be crowned
with him, and at his side should receive from the pope the divine
blessing.” [Footnote: Thiers, “Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire.”
vol. v., p. 249.]
Josephine, therefore, had won a victory over the hostile sisters, but
this defeat made them still more embittered, and though they were now
compelled to recognize Josephine as the imperial wife of their brother,
yet they would retreat only step by step, and at “least secure a place
near the imperial throne, and not be compelled by the empress to stand
behind. Yet this was exactly what was to take place according to the
programme, which prescribed for the festivity in Notre Dame that on the
day of coronation the brothers of the emperor should carry the trail of
his mantle, and that his sisters should at the same time carry the trail
of the empress’s mantle. But the sisters of Napoleon decidedly opposed
this arrangement.
“The emperor, tired of these constant wranglings and domestic strifes,
decided as judge, and declared he would no longer listen to these
unheard-of and unjustifiable pretensions.
“‘Truly,’ said he, to the beautiful Pauline, who, as Princess Borghese,
considered herself justified in making opposition, ‘truly, one would
think, after listening to you, that I have despoiled you of the
inheritance of the most blessed king our father.’” [Footnote: “Histoire
du Consulat,” vol. v., p. 251.]
The ambitious sisters, kept within bounds by the angry voice of their
brother, who now for the first time showed himself their ruling emperor,
had to fall into their places, and abide by the regulations of the
ceremony.
Nothing was wanted now to perfect the sacred celebration which was
to crown all the triumphs and victories of Napoleon, nothing but the
arrival of the pope: the whole imperial family, as well as France,
awaited his advent with impatience.
At last the couriers brought the news that the pope had touched the
French soil, and that the people were streaming toward him to manifest
their respect, and to implore his blessing on their knees; the same
people who precisely ten years before had closed the churches, driven
the priests into exile, and consecrated their bacchanalian worship to
the Goddess of Reason!
At last, on the 25th day of November, the pope entered Fontainebleau,
where the emperor and the empress had hastened to receive him. No sooner
was the pope’s approach announced, than Napoleon mounted his horse and
rode to meet him some distance on the way. In the centre of the road
took place the first interview between the representative of Christendom
and the youngest son of the Church, a son who now sat on the throne of
those who in former times had enjoyed the privilege of being called the
elder sons of the Church.
The pope alighted from his carriage as soon as the emperor was in
sight; Napoleon dismounted and hastened to meet and embrace tenderly
his holiness, and then to ascend with him the carriage, the question of
precedence remaining undecided, as the pope and the emperor entered the
carriage at the same time from opposite sides.
Josephine, surrounded by the official dignitaries, the ministers of
state, and all the generals, received the pope under the peristyle of
the palace of Fontainebleau; and then, after Napoleon had led him into
his room, Josephine, accompanied by her ladies, went to welcome Pius,
not as empress, but as an humble, devout daughter of the Church, who
wished to implore a blessing from the Holy Father of Christendom.
Josephine was deeply moved; her whole being was agitated and exalted at
once by this greatest of all the privileges which destiny had reserved
for her, and by this consecration which she was to receive at the hands
of the vicar of Christ.
As the pope, agreeably affected by this respect and emotion of the
empress, offered her his hand with a genial smile, Josephine, humble as
a little girl, sank down on her knees before him, kissed his hand, and
with streaming eyes implored his benediction. Pius, in his soft, winning
manner, promised to love her as a daughter, and that she should ever
find in him a father.
The empress, deeply moved by this affectionate condescension of the
pope, and impressed by the importance and solemnity of the moment,
bade her ladies withdraw, whilst she, in solitude and silence, as a
confessing child before the priest, should unveil her innermost heart
to the Holy Father. She then sank down upon her knees, and, stammering,
ashamed, with her voice broken by her sobs, acknowledged to the pope
that her marriage to Napoleon had never received, the consecration of
the Church; that, contracted amid the stormy days of the revolution, it
still lacked the blessing hand of the priest, and that her own husband
was to be blamed for this neglect. In vain had she often besought him
that, since he had restored the Church to Prance, he should himself give
to the world a striking example of his own return by having his marriage
blessed by it. But Napoleon refused, although he had been the cause of
Cardinal Caprera giving to the marriage of his sister Caroline Murat,
long after it had been contracted, the blessing of the Church.
Pius heard this confession of his imperial penitent with holy
resentment, and he promised her his aid and protection, assuring her he
would refuse the act of coronation if the ecclesiastical marriage did
not precede it.
No sooner had Josephine left him, than the pope asked for an interview
with the emperor, to whom he declared, with all the zeal of a true
servant of the Church, and the conviction of a devout, God-fearing man,
that he was willing to crown him, and to grant him the blessing of
the Church, for the state of the conscience of emperors had never been
examined before their anointment; but if his wife was to be crowned with
him, he must refuse his co-operation, because in crowning Josephine he
dare not grant the divine sanction to concubinage.
Napoleon, though inwardly much irritated at Josephine, who, as he at
once supposed, had made this confession to the pope in her own interest,
was still willing to abide by the circumstances. He did not wish to
irritate the pope, who as was well known was unyielding in all matters
pertaining to faith; moreover, he could not change any thing in the
already published ceremonial of the day, and thus he consented to have
the ecclesiastical marriage. After this conversation with the pope,
Napoleon went at once to Josephine, and the whole strength of his anger
was spent in violent reproaches against her untimely indiscretion.
Josephine endured these silently, and full of inward satisfaction; she
did not listen to Napoleon’s angry words; she only heard that he was
decided to have his marriage sanctioned by the Church, and now she would
be his wife before God, as she had been before men for the last
ten years. Now at last her fate was decided, and her marriage made
irrevocable; now she would no longer dread that Napoleon would punish
her childlessness by a divorce.
During the night which preceded the day of the coronation, the night
of the 1st of December, the ecclesiastical marriage of Napoleon and
Josephine took place in the chapel of the Tuileries. The only witnesses
were Talleyrand and Berthier, from both of whom the emperor had exacted
an oath of profound silence. Cardinal Fesch, the emperor’s uncle,
performed the ceremony, and pronounced the benediction of the Church
over this marriage, which Bonaparte’s love for Josephine had induced him
to consent to, and which her love endeavored to make indissoluble.
This marriage, which she desired both as a loving woman and as a devout
Christian, was the most glorious triumph which Josephine had ever
obtained over the enmity of her husband’s sisters, for it was a new
proof of the love and faithfulness of this man, whom neither expediency,
nor family, nor state reasons, could remove from her, and who, with
the hand of love, had guided her away from all the dangers which had
surrounded her.