THREE GENERATIONS: MADAME LA MÈRE, MARIE LOUISE, AND THE KING OF ROME
It seems as though Hell had been let loose on this great man and his
family. The crowned heads of Europe and the plutocrats stopped at
nothing in order that they might make his ruin complete. They dare not
run the risk of putting him to death outright, but they engineered, by
means of willing tools, a plan that was unheard-of in its atrocious
character. They poured stories of unfaithfulness into the ears of a
faithless woman whose name will go down to posterity as an ignoble
wife and callous mother. She took with her into Austria the King of
Rome, a beautiful child who was put under the care of Austrian tutors.
He was watched as though he held the destinies of empires in the
hollow of his hand. His father's name was not allowed to fall on his
youthful ears, and more than one tutor was dismissed because he
secretly told him something of his father's fame. Treated as a
prisoner, spied upon by Metternich's satellites, not allowed to have
any visitors without this immortal Chancellor's permission, not
allowed to communicate with his father's family or with Frenchmen,
this pathetic figure, stuffed with Austrian views, is seized with a
growing desire to learn the history of his father, who declared in a
letter to his brother Joseph in 1814 that he would rather see his son
strangled than see him brought up in Vienna as an Austrian prince.[18]
Prince Napoleon in his excellent book--"Napoleon and His
Detractors"--refers to the young Prince playing a game of billiards
with Marmont and Don Miguel, the former having been one of his
father's most important generals. He it was who betrayed him, and now
he is become the Duke's confidant and instructor. The Prince says that
his cousin asked to be told about the deeds that his father had done,
his fall, and exile. There does not appear to be any record in
existence as to what Marmont conveyed or withheld from the son of
Marie Louise, but there is much evidence to show that the young man
was not only an eager student of his father's career, but fully
realised his own importance and influence on European politics.
It has been stated that until 1830 he really knew nothing of passing
events in the land of his birth. Obenaus, his tutor, states in his
diary, January 18, 1825: "During the afternoon walk, the political
relations of the Prince to the Imperial family and to the rest of the
world were discussed." Count Neipperg advised him to study the French
language, and his reply was: "This advice has not fallen on an
unfruitful or an ungrateful soil. Every imaginable motive inspires me
with the desire to perfect myself in, and to overcome the difficulties
of, a language which at the present moment forms the most essential
part of my studies. It is the language in which my father gave the
word of command in all his battles, in which his name was covered with
glory, and in which he has left us unparalleled memoirs of the art of
war; while to the last he expressed the wish that I should never
repudiate the nation into which I was born."[19] He further adds, "The
_chief_ aim of my life must be not to remain unworthy of my father's
fame."
His grandfather, the Emperor Francis--who was reputed to be quite
devoted to him--said, "I wish that the Duke should revere the memory
of his father." "Do not suppress the truth," says he to Metternich
(the disloyal friend of Napoleon). "Teach him above all to honour his
father's memory." The Chancellor replies, "I will speak to the Duke
about his father as I should wish myself to be spoken of to my own
son." What irony! Whatever attempts were made at any time to
depreciate the Emperor, his son's loyalty to him never flinched. He
regarded his father in the light of a hero whose glorious traditions
were unequalled by any warrior or ruler of men. He drank in every
particle of information he could discover about his father's life, and
was by no means ignorant of what would be his own great destiny should
he be permitted to live.
A strong party in France longed to have the son of their Emperor on
the throne of France. A section of the Poles clamoured to have him
proclaimed King of Poland after the Polish revolution, and the Greeks
claimed him as their future King. All existing records dealing with
the Prince's view concerning his position indicate quite clearly that
he never under-estimated his importance. He was fully alive to and
appreciated the growing devotion to himself, his cause, and to the
great name he bore. We learn from Marshal Marmont that the Prince
received him with marked cordiality when the Emperor Francis gave him
permission to relate to him his father's history. Marmont, like all
traitors, never neglected to put forth his popularity with the Emperor
Napoleon. This is a habit with people who do great injury to their
friends. They always make it appear that the injured person is
afflicted with growing love for them--they never realise how much they
are loathed and mistrusted.
The Prince at first received him with suspicion, then he tolerated him
coldly, and it was not until Marmont fascinated him with stories of
the genius and unparalleled greatness of his father's history that the
young man subdued his prejudices and encouraged the Marshal in his
visits to his apartments, in order that he might learn all that
Marmont could tell him of his father's qualities and accomplishments.
The young Napoleon caused the General to marvel at the quick
intelligence he displayed in the pointed comments made on his father's
career. In recognition of his services Marmont was presented with a
portrait of the Prince.[20]
His cousin, Prince Napoleon, son of King Jerome, in his book "Napoleon
and His Detractors," obviously desires to convey the impression that
all questions, important or unimportant, relating to the Emperor, were
studiously kept from his son, and until he arrived at a certain age
there can be little doubt that undue and unnatural precautions were
taken to prevent the Emperor's name being spoken, but the means used
for this purpose must have proved abortive, as everything points to
him having been well informed. He appears to have had an instinctive
knowledge that nullified the precautions of the Court of Vienna, and
especially its culpable Chancellor, Metternich, whose clumsy and
heartless treatment is so apparent to all students of history.
Probably this is the policy that prevailed up to 1830 which Prince
Napoleon complains of. Be that as it may, we are persuaded that the
Duke was not only well informed, but took a keen interest in the
events of his own and of his father's life, long before the advent of
Marmont as his tutor. For instance, on one occasion his friend, Count
Prokesch, dined with his grandfather in 1830, and at table the Prince
was afforded great pleasure in having the opportunity of conversing
with this distinguished man. The young Duke knew that Prokesch had
broken a lance in 1818 in defence of his father, and he eagerly
availed himself of the chance of saying some very complimentary things
to the Count. He informs him that he has "known him a long while, and
loved him because he defended his father's honour at a time when all
the world vied with each other to slander his name"; and then he
continues: "I have read your 'Battle of Waterloo,' and in order to
impress every line of it on my memory I translated it twice in French
and Italian."[21] Obviously this young man was neither a dunce nor
indolent when his father's fame and his own interests were in
question.
One of the most remarkable features of this pathetic young life is the
intense interest his mother's husband began to take in him, and he
probably owed a great deal to the fact that Count Neipperg urged him
to make himself familiar with the glory of the Empire and his father's
deeds. Strange though it may appear, the son of the Great Napoleon and
the morganatic husband of his mother were attached to each other in
the most intimate way. If he perceived the immoral relations between
Neipperg and Marie Louise, the Duke never seems to have divulged it;
but taking into account the passionate love and devotion he had for
his father's memory, it is barely likely that he knew either of the
amorous connection or marriage having taken place between the Count
and his mother, otherwise he would have had something to say about it,
not only to Neipperg himself, but certainly to his friends Prokesch,
Baron Obenaus, and Count Dietrichstein, and very naturally his
grandfather. It may be that the circumstances of his life made him
cautious, and even cunning, in keeping to himself an affair that was
generally approved by the most interested parties, but it is hardly
likely that the spirit of natural feeling had been so far crushed out
of him as to forbid his openly resenting a further monstrous wrong
being done to his Imperial father.
The young Prince was the centre of great political interest, and the
object of ungrudging sympathy and devotion of a large public in
Europe, and especially in France, and had his life been preserved a
few more years he would, in spite of obstacles and prejudices, have
been put on the throne of the land of his birth.
Metternich, the inveterate trickster, does not appear to have had any
serious thought of encouraging the project of making the Duke Emperor
of the French. His subtle game was to use him as a terror to Louis
Philippe when that monarch became refractory or showed signs of
covetousness.
The Prince carried himself high above sordid party methods. He was
proud of being heir to a throne that his father had made immortal and
he was determined not to soil it. If it was to be reclaimed, all
obstacles must be removed ere he would lend his countenance to it.
There must be a clear, uninterrupted passage. Thirty-four million
souls, it was claimed, were anxious for his restoration to France.
Amongst the leaders were to be found some of his father's old
companions in arms and in exile, amongst whom none were more
enthusiastic than the loyal and devoted Count Montholon, Bertrand, the
petulant and penitent Gourgaud, and Savary, Duke of Rovigo. These were
joined to thousands of other brave men who would have considered it an
honour to shed their last drop of blood for the cause, and in memory
of him whom they had loved so well. The two first-named were executors
to his father's will, in which Napoleon enjoins his son not to attempt
to avenge his death but to profit by it. He reminds him that things
have changed. He was obliged to daunt Europe by his arms, but now the
way is to convince her. His son is urged not to mount the throne by
the aid of foreign influence, and he is charged to deserve the
approbation of posterity. He is reminded that "MERIT may be pardoned,
but not intrigue," and that he is to "propagate in all uncivilised and
barbarous countries the benefits of Christianity and civilisation.
Religious ideas have more influence than certain narrow-minded
philosophers are willing to believe. They are capable of rendering
great services to humanity."
These are only a few of the excellent thoughts transmitted to the
young man from the tragic rock whose memories will ever defame the
name of those who combined to commit a crime unequalled in political
history.
It is none the less a phenomenon that this "abode of darkness," so
monstrous in the history of its perfidy, should be illumined by the
great figure that stamped its fame for evermore with his personality.
One of the last and finest works of genius he did there was to draw up
a constitution for his son. It is doubtful whether Montholon ever
succeeded in conveying it to the Prince, who passed on before the
legitimate call to put it into practice came.
The Powers that made holy war for the last time on the great soldier
with 900,000 men against his 128,000 arrogated the right to outlaw and
brand him as the disturber of public peace. I have already said this
was their ostensible plea, but the real reason was his determination
to exterminate feudalism and establish democratic institutions as soon
as he could bring the different factions into harmony. He failed, but
the colossal cost of his failure in men and money is unthinkable. His
subjugation left Great Britain alone with a debt, as already stated,
of eight hundred millions, and then there was no peace.
The constitution intended for his son could have been very
beneficially applied to some of the nations represented at the
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle by the allied sovereigns who declared him
an outlaw, and spent their time in allocating slices of other people's
territory to each other. The only nation that came badly out of the
Congress was Great Britain.
This terrible despot, who was beloved by the common people and hated
by the oligarchy, left behind him a constitution that might well be
adopted by the most democratic countries.
The first article--composed of six words: "The sovereignty dwells in
the nation"--stamps the purpose of it with real democracy. It might do
no harm to embody some of its clauses into our own constitution at the
present time. We very tardily adopted some of its laws long after his
death, and we might go on copying to our advantage. He was a real
progressor, but his team was difficult to guide. Had he been
conciliated and allowed to remain at peace, he would have democratised
the whole of Europe, but the fear of that, or the legitimacy idea, was
undoubtedly the great underlying cause of much of the trouble. The
mistrust and animus against the father was reflected upon the son, who
was practically a State prisoner.
During childhood the Prince was strong and healthy, and his robust
physique caused favourable comment. It was not until 1819 that his
health became affected by an attack of spotted fever. This passed away
in a few weeks, but the decline of his health, which was attributed to
his rapid growth, dates from that period. He died prematurely on July
22, 1832, at Schönbrunn, and the accounts which may be relied upon
indicate either wilfully careless or incompetent medical treatment. It
is even asserted that this heir to the throne of France, ushered in
twenty-one years before as the herald of Peace, was to be regarded as
a source of infinite danger, and for that barbaric reason his health
was allowed to be slowly and surely undermined until death took him
from the restraining influences and crimeful policy of the Courts of
Europe. Great efforts have been made to convince a sceptical public
that his early death was the result of youthful indiscretions, but
this is stoutly denied by Prokesch, who declares that he was a
strictly moral youth, and Baron Obenaus, in his diary, justifies this
opinion, if there was nothing else to support it. Moreover the same
Anton, Count Prokesch was asked by Napoleon III. to tell him the truth
as to the alleged love affairs, and he averred that the rumours were
without foundation.
The King of Rome died at Schönbrunn in the same room that his father
had occupied in 1809. In Paris a report was put about that he had been
poisoned by the Court of Vienna. This opinion has been handed down,
and there are many persons to-day who have a firm belief in its
possibility.
Another common rumour, current in 1842, was that Metternich sent a
poisoned lemon by Prokesch, which had done its work, and even this
highly improbable story is not without reason believed, because
Metternich was known to be the most heartless cunning Judas in
politics at that time. He had betrayed the father of the Prince while
he was declaring the most loyal friendship. He admits this, nay, even
boasts of it, in his memoirs, and his shameful conduct has its reward
by having won for him the stigma of wishing for, and hastening on, the
death of an unfortunate young man for whom ordinary manliness should
have claimed compassion. This moral assassin of father and son
declared that he had "used all the means in his power to second the
hand of God" by trapping Napoleon into the clutches of the combined
moralists of Europe. The Usurper was to be ruined, then peace
proclaimed for evermore. That was their pretence, though it could not
have been their conviction. If it was, they were soon disillusioned.
I made a long journey in company with a Danish statesman a few years
ago, and amongst other things that we conversed about was the reign
and fall of Napoleon. This gentleman held up his hands and said to me,
"Oh! what a blunder the criminal affair was. Had the Powers beheld the
mission of this man aright, what a blessing it would have been to the
world!"--and there is not much difficulty in supporting the view of
this Danish gentleman. The more one probes into the history of the
period, the more vivid the blunder appears.
Metternich has the distinction of being eulogised by M. Taine, who was
neither fair nor accurate, and there is not much glory in being
championed by a man whose book is made up of libels. Metternich may
here be dismissed as being only one of many whose highest ambition was
to destroy the man whom the French nation had made their monarch.
Their aim was accomplished, but the spirit that evolved from the wreck
of the Revolution still lives on, and may rise again to be avenged for
the great crime that was committed.
Whether the gifted and amiable son of the Emperor Napoleon was
despatched by the cruellest of all assassinations or came by his
premature death by neglect, or by natural and constitutional causes,
is a matter that may never be cleared up, though the actions of the
high commissioners in the nauseous drama cause lingering doubts to
prevail as to their innocence. It is certain that several determined
attempts were made to take the Prince's life, and large sums were
offered to desperadoes to carry out this murderous deed. Then the
Court of Vienna were in constant fear of his abduction. His
invitations to come to France were perpetual.
A lady cousin--the Countess Napoleone Camerata, daughter of Elisa
Bacciochi, a sister of the Emperor, easily obtained a passport from
the Pope's Secretary of State, and coquetted so successfully with the
Austrian Ambassador, that he gave it a double guarantee of good faith
by signing it. This impetuous and eccentric female made her way
uninterruptedly to Vienna, found her cousin on the doorstep, made a
rush for him and seized his hand, then shouted, "Who can prevent my
kissing my sovereign's hand?" She also found means to convey letters
to him. There is not much said about this Napoleonic dash, but from
the records that are available the incident set the heroes--comprising
the allied Courts (including France)--into a flutter of excitement.
The fuss created by the enterprise of the pretty little Countess gives
a lurid insight into the wave of comic derangement which must have
taken possession of men's minds.
This lady received a pension during the Third Empire, and in eighteen
years it mounted to over six million francs. She died in Brittany,
1869, and left her fortune to the Prince Imperial.
That there was a determined and well-conceived plot to carry the Duke
off is undoubted, but the counter-plots prevailed against the more
ardent Bonapartists who were thirsting for a resurrection of the
glorious Empire. Prince Louis Napoleon, the eldest son of King Louis,
disagreed with the idea of his family. He looked upon the Emperor's
son as being an Austrian Prince, imbued with Austrian methods and
policy, and therefore dangerous to the best interests of France. This
Prince went so far as to hail with pleasure the crowning of Louis
Philippe. He died in 1831. In the following year his Imperial cousin
passed on too, and his demise was a great blow to the Bonapartists'
cause, and it well-nigh killed the aged Madame Mère, who had centred
all her hopes in him. Marie Louise announced his death, to his
grandmother and asks her to "accept on this sorrowful occasion the
assurance of the kindly feeling entertained for her by her
affectionate daughter," and here is the cold, dignified, crushing
reply from Madame Mère. It is dictated, and dated Rome, August 6,
1832:--
"Madame, notwithstanding the political shortsightedness which
has constantly deprived me of all news of the dear child whose
death you have been so considerate to announce to me, I have
never ceased to entertain towards him the devotion of a mother.
In him I still found an object of some consolation, but to my
great age, and to my incessant and painful infirmities, God has
seen fit to add this blow as fresh proof of His mercy, since I
firmly believe that He will amply atone to him in His glory for
the glory of this world.
"Accept my thanks, madame, for having put yourself to this
trouble in such sorrowful circumstances to alleviate the
bitterness of my grief. Be sure that it will remain with me all
my life. My condition precludes me from even signing this
letter, and I must therefore crave your permission to delegate
the task to my brother."
Never a word about the lady's relationship to her son or to herself.
Her reply is studiously formal, but every expression of it betokens
grief and thoughts of the great martyr whom the woman she was writing
to had wronged. There is not a syllable of _open_ reproach, though
there runs through it a polite, withering indictment that must
assuredly have cut deeply into the callous nature of this notorious
Austrian Archduchess who had played her son so falsely.
This wonderful mother of a wonderful family seems to have been the
least suspected of political plotting of all the Bonapartists. She
was respected by all, and revered and beloved by many. Crowned heads
were not indifferent to her strength and nobility of character, but
the stupid old King who succeeded her son to the throne of France got
it into his head that she was harbouring agents in Corsica to excite
rebellion, and he thereupon had a complaint lodged against her. Pius
VII., who knew Madame Mère, sent his secretary to see her about this
supposed intrigue. She listened to what the representative of the Pope
had to say, and then with stern dignity began her reply:--
"Monseigneur, I do not possess the millions with which they credit me,
but let M. de Blacas tell his master Louis XVIII. that if I did, I
should not employ them to foment troubles in Corsica, or to gain
adherents for my son in France, since he already has enough; I should
use them to fit out a fleet to liberate him from St. Helena, where the
most infamous perfidy is holding him captive."
Then she bowed reverently and left the room.
This was indeed a slashing rebuff both to Pius VII. and the "Most
Christian King."
Another very good story is told of this extraordinary old lady by H.
Noel Williams. It appears she persisted after the fall of the Empire
in using the Imperial arms on her carriage.
"Why should I discontinue this symbol?" she asked. "Europe bowed to
the dust before my son's arms for ten years, and her sovereigns have
not forgotten it."
On one occasion she was out driving when a block occurred. Two
Austrian officers, who were riding past, boldly looked into the
carriage. Madame Mère, observing the Austrian uniform, to which she
had an aversion, was excited to indignation, so letting down the
window she exclaimed to them, "What, gentlemen, is your pleasure? If
it is to see the mother of the Emperor Napoleon, here she is!" The
officers were naturally crestfallen. They respectfully saluted and
rode off. These stinging shots of hers were quite disturbing; they
always went home, and reached too far for the comfort of her son's
persecutors.
Her letter to the allied sovereigns who met at Aix-la-Chapelle is one
of the most trenchant indictments that has ever been penned. Its
logic, its brave, though courteous, appeal for justice and
magnanimity, and above all the echo of motherly love which
characterises it, stamp it as a document worth cherishing. The last
paragraph will fascinate the imagination of generations yet to come,
and heavy judgment will be laid on those that were committing the
crime.
"Reasons of State," she says, "have their limits, and _posterity_,
which _forgets nothing_, admires above everything the generosity of
conquerors."
The allied sovereigns were afraid to answer the letter. Better for
their reputations if they had obviated the necessity of writing it.
The testimony of Pius VII. is that she was "a God-fearing woman who
deserved to be honoured by every prince in Christendom."
A great joy came to Madame Mère in 1830, when they told her that the
Government had decided to replace the statue of Napoleon on the
Vendome Column. She went into ecstasies over this, but bewailed her
lameness (she had broken her thigh that year) and total blindness,
which would forever prevent her beholding the statue. She turned away
from these painful reflections and comforted herself with a few words
of sad humour, remarking that if she could have been in Paris as in
former days, God would have given her strength to climb to the top of
the column to assure herself that it was there. She refused to
separate her lot from that of her children, and would not accept the
proposal that the sentence of banishment should be repealed unless it
included all her family. This remarkable woman died February 2, 1836,
aged eighty-five, and Napoleon III. had the remains of his grandmother
and Cardinal Fesch removed to Ajaccio in 1851. Six years later the
remains were again removed and deposited in a vault constructed to
receive them in a church which was built subsequent to the first
interment at Ajaccio.
Pity and strange it is that the Emperor's faithless second wife should
be noticed at all in history. Happily, very few even of those
historians who are anti-Napoleon have anything very complimentary to
say of her. She survived her son the King of Rome fifteen years, and
the earth claimed her in December, 1847, her age being fifty-six. Had
this amiable adulteress, who wished success to the allied armies
against her husband, lived a little longer, she would have witnessed
the humiliating spectacle of her father's successor being forced to
abdicate his throne in favour of the nephew of her Imperial husband,
whose memory all noble hearts revere, and whose sufferings, domestic
and public, will ever lie at the door of this woman who allowed
herself to be the base accomplice of a great assassination. The most
fitting reference to her death appeared in the _Times_ newspaper,
which said that "nothing in her life became her like the leaving it."
On April 15, 1821, in the third paragraph of his will, Napoleon, with
consistent magnanimity, if not wilful indifference to this passive,
icy female's abandonment of him, says: "I have always had reason to be
pleased with my dearest Marie Louise. I retain for her, to my last
moment, the most tender sentiments. I beseech her to watch, in order
to preserve my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy."
What irony!
It is quite a reasonable proposition to suppose that Napoleon must
have had a secret suspicion of his wife's infidelity. It is even hard
to believe that he had not a full knowledge of her actual association
with Count Neipperg. It will be observed that while his reference to
her is dutiful, not to say tender, there is still something lacking,
as though he kept something snugly in the back of his head, something
like the following:--"I cannot make this historical document without
alluding to you for my son's sake, though I know full well you have
wronged me and consorted with my enemies and betrayers. I know all
this, but I am about to pass on, and true to my instincts of
compassion and to my Imperial dignity, I must carry my sorrow and
grief with me, and having given you as good a testimonial as I can, I
must leave you to settle accounts with posterity as to your conduct
towards me and your adopted country. I shall not do by you as you have
done. I hope full allowance will be made for all you have made me
suffer. Meanwhile, I am about to relieve the digestion of Kings by
passing to the Elysian Fields, there to be greeted by Kleber, Desaix,
Bessières, Duroc, Ney, Murat, Masséna, and Berthier, and we shall talk
of the deeds we have done together. Yes, Marie Louise, I bend under
the terrible yoke your father, his Chancellor, and the allied
satellites have made for me, and yet I keep these incomparable
warriors of Europe in a state of alarm. I wish you joy of your allies,
who have behaved so nobly to your husband in captivity. I have often
thought in my solitude, Louise, that it would have been a more popular
national union had I carried out my intention of taking for my second
wife a Frenchwoman. It may be that my marriage with you, consummated
by every token of peace and goodwill, was really the beginning of my
downfall. Ah! how much more noble of you to have followed me in my
adversity to Elba. You might have done great service to France and to
your native land, to say nothing of the possibility of breaking up the
coalition against me and saving rivers of blood. Waterloo might never
have been fought had you emulated your matchless sister-in-law,
Catherine of Westphalia, in her attitude of supreme womanhood, and
your fame might have surpassed that of Joan of Arc, and been handed
down to distant ages as an example of heroic firmness and devotion,
and then you would have been beatified by the Church and acclaimed a
saint by the people to which you belong. You shared with me the
unequalled grandeur of the most powerful throne on earth. I was
devoted to you and you betrayed me. Your father insisted that you
should break your marriage vow and found in you a willing accomplice
in the outrage committed against me. You had shared my throne, and I
had reason to expect that every human instinct would call you to my
side in my exile, and the thought that burns into my soul is that in
the infamy of years, posterity will not be reproached for averting its
eye from you as well as from that heartless father who requested you
to forsake me. Catherine of Westphalia did better. She defied her
father, and clung more closely to her husband when he needed all the
succour of a sympathetic being to comfort him in his hour of dire
misfortune. These gloomy thoughts are forced upon me by every law of
nature, and now that I have but a brief time left, I am impelled to
bequeath to you in the third paragraph of my last will and testament
some tender remembrance of you. I do this notwithstanding that you,
Marie Louise, Empress of the French, prayed to God that He would bless
the arms of the enemies of the land of your adoption. And then that
letter which I sent you from Grenoble in a nutshell on my way from
Elba to Paris to reclaim the throne which treason had deprived me of.
I requested you to come to me with my son the King of Rome. You
ignored that, as you did other communications which I sent, and which
I am assured you received. I make no public accusation against you.
_That_ would be undignified and unkingly."
In spite of his apparent unaltered affection for his wife, Napoleon
reflectively made occasional remarks during his exile which indicated
that her conduct was much in his mind; and the foregoing portrayal of
his sentiments towards her may be regarded as a human probability. The
remarkable thing is that he should have made any reference at all to
this erotic woman in his will. It puzzled his companions in exile, who
knew well enough that she was the cause of much mental anguish to him.
It afflicted him so keenly on two notable occasions that he drew
pathetically a comparison between her conduct and that which would
have been Josephine's under similar circumstances. It is an
astonishing characteristic in Napoleon that he always forgave those
who had injured him most.
In order to emphasise the spirit of forgiveness, he specially refers
to a matter that must have taken a lot of forgiving. In the sixth
paragraph of his will he says: "The two unfortunate results of the
invasions of France, when she had still so many resources, are to be
attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and La
Fayette. I forgive them--may the posterity of France forgive them as I
do." Then in the seventh paragraph he pardons his brother Louis for
the libel he published in 1820, although, as he states, "It is replete
with false assertions and falsified documents." He heaps coals of fire
on Marie Louise by requesting Marchand to preserve some of his hair
and to cause a bracelet to be made of it with a little gold clasp. It
is highly probable that the wife of Count Neipperg would rather not
have been reminded of her amorous habits and other culpable conduct by
these little attentions.
Neipperg, this foul and willing instrument of seduction, whose
baseness insults every moral law, suffered great agony for three years
from an incurable disease, and died in December, 1828, aged
fifty-seven years. The Kings and regicides in their ferocious fear had
made it an important part of their policy that Marie Louise should be
the pivot on which the complete ruin of Napoleon should centre, so
Neipperg was fixed upon as a fit and proper person to mould the
ex-Empress into passive obedience to the wishes of her husband's
inveterate enemies. Meneval notes that this man had already amours to
his credit. He had indeed run away with another man's wife, and had
issue by her. Probably his amorous reputation influenced the
oligarchy in their choice.
In order that the plan might be carried out, he adroitly improvised
falsehood, poured into her ears stories of faithlessness on the part
of her Imperial husband, read books and pamphlets manufactured and
exactly suited for the purpose he had in view. His instructions were
to carry things as far he could get them to go, and he did this with
revolting success.
God's broad earth has not known a more ugly incident than that of
carrying personal hatred and political cowardice to such a pitch of
delirium as that of forcing a weak woman to forsake her husband,
sacrifice the interests of her child, and tempt her to break her
marriage vow in order that her husband's ruin might be more completely
assured. As a matter of high policy its wickedness will never be
excelled.
At the death of her morganatic husband Marie Louise became
"inconsolable." She gave orders for a "costly mausoleum to be put up
so that her grief might be durably established." In reply to a letter
of condolence written to her by the eminent Italian, Dr. Aglietti, in
which he seems to have made some courteous and consoling observations,
she says "that all the efforts of art were powerless, for it is
impossible to fight against the _Divine Will_. You are very right in
saying that time and religion can alone diminish the bitterness of
such a loss. Alas! the former, far from exercising its power over me,
only daily increases my grief." This "amiable," grief-stricken royal
sham, overcharged with expressions of religious fervour, succumbs
again to her natural instincts. "Time," she avers, "cannot console,"
but only increases the depth of her grief for "our dear departed."
Her sentiments would be consummately impressive were it not that we
know how wholly deceitful she was without in the least knowing it. But
the creeping horror of time is quickly softened by her marriage in
1833 to a Frenchman called De Bombelles, who was in the service of her
native land, and is said to have had English blood in his veins. In
spite of the loyal effort of Meneval to make her ironic procession
through life appear as favourable as he can, the only true impression
that can be arrived at is that she was without shame, self-control, or
pity.
A strange sympathiser of Napoleon in his dire distress was a daughter
of Maria Theresa and a sister of Marie Antoinette--Queen Marie
Caroline, grandmother to Marie Louise. She had regarded the Emperor of
the French with peculiar aversion, but when his power was broken and
he became the victim of persecution, this good woman forgot her
prejudices, sent for Meneval, and said to him that she had had cause
to regard Napoleon at one time as an enemy, but now that he was in
trouble she forgot the past. She declared that if it was still the
determination of the Court of Vienna to sever the bonds of unity
between man and wife in order that the Emperor might be deprived of
consolation, it was her granddaughter's duty to assume disguise, tie
sheets together, lower herself from the window, and bolt.
There is little doubt the dexterous and spirited old lady gave Louise
sound advice, and had she acted under her holy influence, her name
would have become a monument of noblemindedness, a lesson, in fact,
against striking a vicious, cowardly blow at the unfortunate. It is
moreover highly probable that Queen Caroline felt, at the time, that
the political marriage of her granddaughter to the French Emperor was
ill-assorted and tragic, but the deed having been done, she upheld the
divine law of marriage. Besides, she knew that Napoleon had been an
indulgent, kind husband to the uneven-minded girl, and that, whatever
his faults may have been, it was her duty to comfort him and share in
his sorrow as she had so amply shared in his glory. Hence she urges a
reunion with the exile, but the ex-Empress may have made it
impossible ere this to enjoy the consoling sweets of conjugal
companionship, and her subsequent conduct makes it more than likely
that she was too deeply compromised to abandon the vortex and face the
penalty of the errors she had committed.
"I could listen," says Napoleon, "to the intelligence of the death of
my wife, my son, or of all my family, without a change of feature--not
the slightest emotion or alteration of countenance would be visible.
But when alone in my chamber, _then_ I suffer. Then the feelings of
the man burst forth."
We are not accustomed to think of this strong personality as being
overcome with soft emotions. We have regarded him as the
personification of strength, and yet with all his gigantic power over
men and himself, he had a real womanly supply of human tenderness.
Once he was seen weeping before the portrait of his much beloved son,
whom he called "Mon pauvre petit chou." "I do not blush to admit,"
said he on a memorable occasion, "that I have a good deal of a
mother's tenderness. I could never count on the faithfulness of a
father who did not love his children."
FOOTNOTES:
[18] "Correspondance de Napoléon," vol. 128, p. 133.
[19] Quoted from De Wertheimer's "Duke of Reichstadt," p. 330.
[20] See "Memoirs."
[21] See "Memoirs."