SOME COURT DETAILS
ONCE bitten, twice shy. Napoleon had had one wife of whom doubtful
stories had circulated. He would run no risk with the new one. Marie
Louise had been strictly guarded all her life. Napoleon determined that
in that respect he would substitute scorpions for her father’s whips. No
man was ever to be presented to his wife without his consent; under no
circumstances whatever was she to be alone with a man at any time.
To achieve his object he revived all the court ceremony of the Soleil
Monarque; he added a few oriental improvements of his own, and to see
that his orders were carried out he surrounded Marie Louise with women
who were the wives and sisters of his own generals, absolutely dependent
on him and accustomed to military procedure.
The Austrian ladies who had attended on Marie Louise before her marriage
were sent home, every single one of them, as soon as she crossed the
frontier. Marie Louise bade good-bye there to the friends of a
lifetime—Napoleon was risking nothing. As Dame d’Honneur and
consequently first lady-in-waiting, Napoleon appointed the Duchess of
Montebello, widow of the unfortunate Lannes, who had died fighting at
Aspern against Marie Louise’s father and an army commanded by Marie
Louise’s uncle. The other important positions were filled in similar
fashion. Four “red women” were appointed, whose duty was to be by the
Empress’s side night and day, two on duty and two within call. Had
enough eunuchs been available, Napoleon would probably have employed
them. A seraglio would have been quite in agreement with his estimation
of woman’s constancy.
Considering that his court etiquette had to recover from the citizen
phase of the Revolution and from the solemn, military stiffness of the
Consulate, Napoleon certainly succeeded remarkably well. Where
aides-de-camp sufficed in 1802, equerries were necessary from 1804
onwards; the _maîtres d’hotel_ had to be replaced by chamberlains; the
Empress’s friends had to be appointed ladies-in-waiting. Like all
reactions, this one went too far. The gaiety of the Bourbon court was
extinguished, and the devil-may-care trifling of the Directory salons
perished equally miserably.
Napoleon himself was mainly responsible for this. He was never good
company in any sense of the word. He had a remarkable gift for saying
unpleasant things in an unpleasant manner, and in his presence the whole
company was on tenterhooks, wondering what was going to happen next. If
a lady had a snub nose, he said so; if a gentleman’s coat was shabby, he
said so with fury, because it was his pride to be the only shabby person
present. If rumours hinting at a lady’s fall from virtue were in
circulation, he told her so at the top of his voice, and demanded an
explanation. When Napoleon quitted his court he invariably left half the
women in tears and half the men in a rage. Then Talleyrand, Prince of
Benevento and Grand Chamberlain, would go limping round from group to
group, saying with his twisted smile, “The Emperor commands you to be
amused.”
While Josephine was Empress, this state of affairs was not so
noticeable, for her dexterous tact soothed the smart caused by
Napoleon’s brusqueness, but under Marie Louise unbearable situations
occurred again and again.
It must be admitted that the various parties at court made at least as
dangerous a mixture as the constituents of gunpowder. To begin with, the
members of the Imperial family itself were as jealous of each other as
they could possibly be. Pauline, who was a mere Serene Highness, would
grind her teeth when she had to address her sister Caroline as “Your
Majesty.” Caroline and the other Queens would rejoice openly because,
being Queens, they were given armchairs when Napoleon’s own mother had
to be content with a stool. And they were one and all scheming for the
succession in the event of Napoleon’s fall.
Then there were still a few Republicans among the Princes and Dukes. One
of the Marshals, compelled by Napoleon to be present at the solemn Mass
which celebrated the Concordat, salved his conscience by swearing
horribly throughout the ceremony, and, when asked by the First Consul
how he had liked it, replied that it only needed to complete the picture
the presence of the half million men who had died to uproot the system.
Such men as these thought little of pushing in front of Serene
Highnesses, or of laughing loudly when Pauline Bonaparte made the
gesture which led to her banishment from court.
Then there were a few representatives of the old noblesse, to whom
Napoleon, in his wholehearted snobbery, had offered large inducements to
come to his court. These people regarded the ennobled barrel-coopers,
smugglers and stable-boys with a mild but galling amusement. On one
occasion Lannes, finding his path to the throne-room blocked by these
ci-devants, drew his sword and swore to cut off the ears of the next
person who impeded him. It was naturally exasperating to the Marshals,
who had risen from the ranks in the course of twenty campaigns, after
receiving wounds in dozens, to find these nobles given high positions
purely on account of their names. To make matters worse, there were very
lively suspicions that many of them had actually borne arms against
France as _émigrés_, in La Vendée, on the Rhine, or in Italy. Yet even
these considerations were of small account compared to the wrath of the
new nobility when they found that the old still clung stubbornly
together, and refused, apparently, to admit even the existence of anyone
outside the Faubourg St. Germain.
The largest group at court was that of the new nobility, but its
superiority of numbers was discounted by the violent jealousies of its
individual members. The maxim which guided Napoleon in his dealings with
his subordinates was, apparently, “Divide et impera.” He set his
generals and ministers by the ears until there was not one of them who
had not some cherished hatred for another. Davout hated Berthier, Lannes
hated Bessières, Ney hated Masséna, Fouché hated them all, Savary hated
Talleyrand; and the resultant bickerings were incessant. At court this
was merely undignified; in the field, as was proved twenty times over in
the Peninsular War, it was positively dangerous. It might be thought
that Napoleon, with inexhaustible funds and domains at his disposal, and
unlimited princely titles in his gift, could have satisfied them all.
But that was where the trouble began. Napoleon could not give them all
they desired, as otherwise (such was the condition of the Empire) they
would have nothing to fight for. There were glaring examples of this.
When Masséna had been made a prince, and had accumulated wealth and
glory past calculation, he deteriorated hopelessly. He failed badly in
the Busaco campaign of 1810-11, and sank promptly into an effete
degeneracy at the age of fifty-five. No, Napoleon could not afford to
give his Marshals all they desired, and in consequence jealousies and
friction increased unbearably.
With the junior officers the difficulties were just as great. Brutes
like Vandamme, aristocrats like Belliard and Ségur, rakes like Lasalle
and fools like Grouchy, were all mingled together. What was worse was
that generals and diplomats of subject states necessarily came into
contact with them also. It must have been maddening for the Prussian,
Von Yorck, to hear Vandamme discoursing on the plunder he had acquired
in Silesia in 1806, or for Schwartzenburg, the Austrian, to hear Lasalle
boasting of his successes among the ladies of Vienna during the
Austerlitz campaign.
But for a whole year, beginning in 1810, Napoleon in spite of these
difficulties was supremely happy. There was peace all over the
Continent, and the Continental system seemed at last to be on the point
of success, for England’s finances were undoubtedly shaken. So short was
gold in England that Wellington in the Peninsula rarely had enough for
his needs, and the Portuguese and Spanish subsidies were heavily in
arrears. Masséna with a hundred thousand men had plunged into the fog of
guerilla warfare on the Tagus, and everyone was confidently expecting to
hear of the fall of Lisbon and the expulsion of the English from
Portugal.
Meanwhile, Napoleon was savouring the delights of respectable married
life. With his nineteen-year-old wife he indulged in all sorts of
innocent pleasures, riding, hunting, practical joking, theatricals. He
so far forgot himself as to _tutoyer_ his Imperial bride in the presence
of his whole Court, and the mighty nobles (who never indulged in such
behaviour even in the intimacy of their wives’ boudoirs) were astonished
to hear the Emperor and Empress exchanging “thees” and “thous.”
Napoleon gave up hours of his precious time to his wife, waited
patiently when she was late for an appointment (Josephine was never
guilty of such an offence) and generally acted the devoted husband to
the life. For a whole year he was faithful to Marie Louise, a feat which
he never achieved before or after until St. Helena. And as the months
rolled by and hope changed to certainty his devotion grew greater still.
For the birth of the child the most elaborate preparations were made.
Some time before he was born Mme. de Montesquieu was named Governess of
the Children of France, a healthy Normandy girl who was in the same
condition as the Empress was secured as prospective wet nurse and kept
under strict surveillance (her own child died when it was taken from
her, but that is not usually recorded), and all France waited in a hush
of expectation.
Once again Napoleon was risking nothing. He was going to leave no
possible foundation for rumours to the effect that the child was not
his, or was not Marie Louise’s. Napoleon Francis Joseph Charles was born
in the presence of the four doctors, Dubois, Corvisart, Bourdier and
Yvan; of the Duchess of Montebello, dame d’honneur; of Mme. de Luçay,
dame d’atours; of Mme. de Montesquieu, Governess of the Children of
France; of six premières dames de chambre; of five women of inferior
rank, and of two filles de garde-robe. Cambacères, Duke of Parma and
Archchancellor of the Empire, was present in an ante-room, and should
have witnessed the birth even if he did not; Berthier, Prince of
Neufchâtel and Wagram, was in attendance on Napoleon, and also may have
witnessed it, while immediately after the birth all the other Grand
Dignitaries of the Empire and the representatives of all the friendly
countries of Europe were paraded through the room. Napoleon had ordered
Corvisart, whose nerve was giving way under the strain of the business,
to treat Marie Louise like a bourgeois wife, but he hardly practised
what he preached. The birth took three days; it certainly seemed a good
omen for this scrap of humanity to keep all these dozens of people with
high-sounding titles waiting for seventy-two consecutive hours.
After an anxious ten minutes the young Napoleon showed signs of life; he
had at first appeared to be dead, and brandy had to be given him and he
had to be discreetly smacked before he would cry. But he did so at
length, and Napoleon announced to the waiting dignitaries, “It is a King
of Rome.” The guns fired a salute to inform the expectant crowds;
twenty-one guns were to herald the birth of a daughter; one hundred a
son. At the twenty-second gun a storm of cheers arose. More than forty
years after, a ceremony almost identical announced the birth of an
equally ill-fated son to another Emperor of the French.
Thus the wish of Napoleon’s heart was fulfilled. For the moment he
disregarded all the counter-balancing disadvantages and revelled in the
possession of an heir. He cared nothing at the time for the fact that
the doctors forbade the Empress to have the much desired second son to
inherit the crown of Italy; it was nothing to him that Bavaria, Holland,
Würtemberg and Saxony at once became restless at seeing their period of
thraldom indefinitely prolonged; he hardly cared that Masséna had come
miserably back from Portugal, with a ruined army, baulked irretrievably
by Wellington at Torres Vedras, so that the “running sore” of the
Peninsular campaign was reopened. He flung away his last chance of going
in person to end the business, merely to remain by the side of the wife
and child of whom he was so proud.
But despite his pride, he still left nothing to chance. Attendance on
Marie Louise was maintained as strictly as before; an unauthorized
presentation to the Empress by the Duchess of Montebello of some
relation of hers called forth a tornado of wrath from the Emperor. The
surveillance was redoubled when Napoleon left for the Russian campaign,
although he paid her a compliment which had never been paid to
Josephine—he appointed her Regent. Poor, silly Marie Louise, three
years after being an insignificant princess, found herself Empress of
the French, Queen of Italy and Regent of half Europe!
Her august husband nevertheless saw fit to have the Empress-Queen-Regent
spied upon by a scullion, who sent him weekly reports, fantastically
spelt on blotched and smeared kitchen paper! Nothing else is necessary
to prove how utterly lacking in decent instincts was the victor of
Austerlitz.
The action was typical of many. Perhaps Napoleon was right; everyone
knows how readily autocracy becomes bureaucracy when the autocrat ceases
to supervise his subordinates adequately; but not even the Second Empire
nor Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century could show so many
spies and counter-spies, police and counter-police and counter
counter-police as did the First Empire. Secret delation flourished, and
the prisons were full of people who had been arbitrarily cast into gaol
without even a form of trial. Napoleon wished to know everything that
was going on; not the least stray fragment of tittle-tattle came amiss
to him. Consequently his regular police developed an organization which
spread its tentacles into every avenue of life. Fouché, Minister of
Police, could boast of having an agent in every drawing-room and kitchen
in the Empire. But then Napoleon feared that Fouché would distort for
his own purposes the reports of the agents when making his own report to
Napoleon. Since Fouché was Fouché such a thing was not unlikely. So
Napoleon had a second and independent police system making similar
reports to another minister. Yet even when Fouché was at last got rid
of, and packed off as His Excellency the Governor of Rome (and later
Dalmatia); even when Savary, “the man who would kill his own father if
Napoleon ordered it,” was in charge of the police affairs the dual
police system was still adhered to. And besides these, Napoleon had
spies of his own, working quite independently, reporting direct to
himself, and he placed these not only in the two original police
systems, but everywhere where they could keep an eye on those in high
places. His royal brothers were surrounded with them; they were to be
found in the secretariats of all the ministers; and since payment was
largely by results, and they had to justify their existence somehow, it
is not surprising that they brought forward trumped-up charges, suborned
perjury, and generally acted as typical Continental agents-provocateurs.
But all this elaborate system failed to gain the least hint of the
Mallet conspiracy, which came so near to pulling down the Empire in the
autumn of 1812.
There were opportunities enough for conspiracy, goodness knows.
Bourbonists and Republicans, Bonapartists and anarchists, all sought to
keep or to acquire power. The Murats, the Beauharnais, the various
Bonaparte brothers and even Bernadotte, were all scheming for the
succession or the regency, while intertwining among all this was the
more legitimate scheming of the various European powers, whose secret
agents were equally active throughout the Empire. There is small room
for wonder that after a dozen years of this frantic merry-go-round the
French people accepted the Bourbon restoration quietly, lest worse
befall.
Yet all this does not excuse Napoleon for spying on his wife; for that
the only justification lies in the event. How many times has Napoleon
been rated for saying that adultery is a matter of opportunity? But his
wife apparently did her best to prove him right. In 1814 the Empire was
falling, and Napoleon’s abdication was evidently inevitable. One thing
alone raised him to an equality with hereditary monarchs, and that was
the fact that he had married the daughter of the greatest of them all.
They might exile General Bonaparte, but would they dare to exile along
with him the Emperor of Austria’s daughter? Besides, in Marie Louise’s
keeping was the young Napoleon. To allow him to accompany his mother
into exile with his father was simply to court disaster.
At first the prospect seemed dark for the Allies. Marie Louise stood
firm, refused to be parted either from her son or from her husband, and
generally acted the devoted wife to the life. In this dilemma the Allies
appealed to the most cunning and cold-hearted of all their
agents—Metternich, who for thirty years was to hold Europe in the
hollow of his hand. Metternich was the cynic magnificent, without belief
in the constancy of any man or woman born. In that self-seeking age his
opinions were largely justified. Metternich plunged adroitly into the
affair. He must have known a great deal about the mentality of
feeble-minded women, seeing that one of his boasts was that he never had
fewer than three mistresses at a time. He selected an agent whom no one
at first sight would have believed to be of any use, but who turned out
to be extremely valuable. If Neipperg was a knave, he was at least the
knave of trumps. He was an elderly one-eyed diplomat, a count and a
general in the Austrian army, with a good record behind him. He
justified Metternich’s choice remarkably quickly, and while His
Imperial, Royal and Apostolic Majesty looked on and applauded this
prostitution of his daughter, he wormed his way into Marie Louise’s
affections, so that by the time Napoleon was deposited in Elba, Marie
Louise’s second child (whose engendering Corvisart had so strictly
forbidden) was expected in a few months’ time, while her first was under
lock and key at Schönbrunn, deprived of all his French friends and
attendants, and started on the unhappy life which was to end sixteen
years later in consumption, despair and death.
To Napoleon’s credit be it recorded that never by word or deed did he
hint at this horrible desertion. All the rest of his life he spoke of
Marie Louise with affection and respect, and had he had his way, Marie
Louise would have been Regent of the French during the minority of
Napoleon II.
Marie Louise lived happily for another thirty years. The Allies rewarded
her adultery by giving her the sovereignty of Parma for life, and there
she lived with Neipperg, whom she married morganatically as soon as
Napoleon was dead. For a long time she bore him one child a year, and
the Emperor of Austria, with great consideration, made all of them
illegitimate and morganatic alike, princes and princesses of the Empire.
No sooner was Neipperg dead than she contracted another morganatic
marriage with a person of even lowlier degree. When she was expelled
from her duchy by the rising of 1831, she was restored by Austrian
bayonets, and she died at length a year before the far more serious
rising of 1848. She never saw her first-born child after 1815 until he
was on his deathbed in 1832.
The unfortunate Louise of Tuscany, who married and then deserted the
Crown Prince of Saxony, tells us that to her, as to all the other
Hapsburg princesses, Marie Louise’s career was held up as a shining
example of the fortune which attended good girls who did just what the
head of the family, the Emperor, told them. But the Emperor of Austria,
since he had nothing to gain by it, did not condone the adultery of this
particular Archduchess.
[Illustration: GRAF VON NEIPPERG]