BROTHERS
NAPOLEON was one of a large family, children of a shiftless father and a
wonderful mother. Much the same might be said of a large number of other
successful men—Moltke and Lincoln, for instance. But it is doubtful
whether any importance from a eugenic point of view can be attached to
this circumstance, for although some of the other Bonapartes showed
undoubted talent in various directions, not one of them has ever
displayed greatness comparable to the Emperor’s. Biologically, Napoleon
might be said to be a “sport,” a “mutation,” as de Vries would say. Yet
even this theory is open to controversy, for mutations usually breed
true, and none of Napoleon’s children ever showed, as far as can be
ascertained, any really striking amount of talent. Napoleon may thus be
considered to be an isolated incident in his family history, one of the
many immovable facts which are so gingerly skirted round by eugenists
and other theorists.
What achievements can be ascribed to the brothers of the man who
achieved so much? A few impracticable suggestions, a few novels (diluted
St. Pierre, most of them), a few lost battles, a few lost kingdoms;
beyond that—nothing. Louis was the father of Napoleon III., a clever
man with many natural disadvantages mingled with his advantages. Lucien
saved one unpleasant situation when president of the Council of Five
Hundred in 1799. Jerome’s grandson was a fairly eminent lawyer of the
United States. The other Bonapartes were like their fathers and
grandfathers before them, dilettanti, wobblers, unstable and
irresponsible.
But useless as were Napoleon’s brothers to him, he nevertheless bore
with them patiently for years. A clannish clinging together is to be
noticed in all their dealings, both while they were obscure and while
they were powerful. An early Corsican environment may perhaps account
for this, or perhaps it is to be ascribed to the intense pride in
himself which Napoleon felt, and which perhaps was extended to all of
his own blood.
Napoleon, the second son, and Joseph, the eldest, were separated from
the other brothers and sisters by a gap of some seven years; the
intervening children had died in infancy. When Charles Bonaparte, the
father, died, therefore, it was upon these two that the headship of the
family and the attendant responsibility fell. Joseph had already shown
signs of his general uselessness. His mathematics and education
generally had been too weak for him to have much chance of success in
the army; he flinched from the Church, and therefore returned to Corsica
to farm the few acres the Bonapartes possessed, and to carry on somehow,
Micawber-like, until something turned up.
Napoleon, just appointed second-lieutenant of artillery, took upon
himself to keep and educate the next brother, Louis. Since he had only
thirty pounds a year pay, the struggle must have been terribly hard.
After a year or two came the temporary success of the Paolists in
Corsica, and as the Bonapartes had taken the French side the family had
to fly to France for safety, leaving all their property behind.
Difficulties increased without number. The French Government, in the
throes of the Terror, had voted monetary support for the refugees, but
in the excitement of the Toulon rebellion the decree was forgotten, and
not a sou was paid. St. Cyr, the State school for girls, was closed, and
another mouth, that of the eldest daughter, Elise, had to be fed by the
struggling family.
But then everything suddenly changed for the better. Napoleon, after
distinguishing himself at Toulon, fought his way up to the rank of chef
de brigade. Joseph obtained a commissaryship in the army of Italy
through the aid of a fellow Corsican, Salicetti. Then also he married
Mademoiselle Clary, daughter of a Marseilles merchant. Her dowry must
have appeared enormous to the famished Bonapartes—it amounted to no
less than six thousand pounds sterling. None of the Bonapartes could as
yet foresee the day when any one of them would spend six thousand pounds
on their most trifling whim.
A year later Napoleon saved the Directory from the revolt of the
sections, and the family was at last in comparatively smooth water. With
Napoleon in command of the Army of the Interior, influence could be
brought to bear to help his brothers. Louis became his aide-de-camp.
Lucien received a commissaryship with the Army of the North, while
immediately afterwards the horizon of possibilities was widened still
further by Napoleon’s appointment to the command in Italy and his
amazing victories there. Joseph received important diplomatic
appointments at Parma and Rome. Louis distinguished himself with the
army. Lucien at this time was the black sheep of the family. He threw up
one appointment after another; he expressed undesirable opinions with
undesirable force, and finally he married a completely illiterate girl
of the Midi. However, Napoleon forgave him, and before setting out for
Egypt he enabled him to secure election to the Council of Five Hundred.
Lucien had always been, even in Corsica, a ranting rhetorician, and in
the Council he would be able to indulge his bent to his heart’s desire.
Jerome, the youngest brother, was still at school, and he had to master
as best he could his disappointment at not accompanying Napoleon to
Egypt. Eugène Beauharnais, his schoolfellow, was going; he asked
bitterly why he could not go also, leaving out of calculation the years
of difference in their ages.
Napoleon returned from Egypt to find his brothers had somewhat improved
their positions. Lucien was president of the Council of Five Hundred;
Joseph’s diplomatic services had enabled him to enter intimately into
the Directory circles, so that Napoleon was at once able to plunge into
the welter of politics. The _coup d’état_ of the 19th Brumaire was
planned. Joseph acted as intermediary between Napoleon, Sièyes, Ducos,
Bernadotte (now his brother-in-law), Fouché and Moreau. Lucien made
himself responsible for the Council, and arranged for the vital meeting
to be held at Versailles. Their united efforts gained for Napoleon the
command of the Army of the Interior. Everything was in readiness. On the
morning of the 19th the Upper House, the Council of Ancients, readily
bowed to the will of the great soldier, but the Council of Five Hundred
were not so willing to pronounce their own sentence of extinction.
Murmurs arose and grew louder, and when Napoleon appeared before them he
was greeted with fierce cries. Half of the Five Hundred were old
_sans-culottes_, men who had gambled with their lives for power under
Hébert and Danton, and when Napoleon, for the only time in his career,
flinched from danger, the dreadful cry which had announced Robespierre’s
fall arose. “Hors la loi! Hors la loi!” shouted the deputies. Napoleon
staggered out of the council hall, apparently ruined.
Lucien Bonaparte leaped into the breach. He spoke fervently on behalf of
his brother, but he was shouted down by the furious deputies. Somebody
demanded a motion of outlawry against Napoleon; Lucien refused to put it
to the vote. Neither side would give way, and the passions grew fiercer
and fiercer. Suddenly Lucien tore off the insignia of his office, and
even as he did so the door flew open and Napoleon’s troops burst in.
Leclerc, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, was at their head. “The Council is
dissolved,” said Leclerc, and the soldiers cleared the hall with fixed
bayonets. Napoleon had utilized to the full the few minutes Lucien had
gained for him. He had inflamed the soldiers with tales of treachery and
assassination. On the evening of the same day a rump of the Council met
under Lucien’s presidency and confirmed Napoleon in all the powers he
demanded.
At first sight this action of Lucien’s appears invaluable. Nevertheless,
on further consideration one realizes that Napoleon could have succeeded
without it. When Bernadotte was King of Sweden, he told the French
Ambassador, apropos of some news regarding French parliamentary
criticism, that if he were King of France with two hundred thousand
soldiers at his back he would put his tongue out at the chamber of
deputies. Napoleon at the time of the _coup d’état_, had not merely two
hundred thousand soldiers, but the whole weight of public opinion at his
back. No decree of outlawry by a discredited Council of Five Hundred
could injure him.
For all this, Lucien was of great use to Napoleon during the Consulate.
As Tribune, he employed his undoubted parliamentary gifts to foist on
the legislative various unpalatable measures. He skilfully defended the
proposed Legion of Honour to an acutely suspicious House, and then
finally he effected a judicious weeding of the Senate and Corps
Législatif during the retirements of 1802. For all these services he was
made Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, and a Senator; he received a
large official income and a palace (Poppesdorf on the Moselle), while it
seemed as if it would not be long before he received royal honours.
Napoleon proposed that he should act as French agent in the Kingdom of
Etruria; the Queen was recently widowed; a marriage would follow
naturally, and Lucien would be proclaimed king. As far as Napoleon knew,
there was no legal bar to such an arrangement, for Lucien’s illiterate
wife had died some time back, but the proposal forced Lucien to make an
announcement he should have made earlier. In 1803 he had secretly
married a widow, Madame Jouberthon, who had been his mistress for a
year, and actually had borne him a child the day before the ceremony.
This was the end of things as far as Lucien was concerned. Napoleon
quarrelled violently with him, and Lucien left the country. He lived for
a time in Rome, where Pius VII. made him Prince of Canino, but had to
move on at the French occupation. He tried to reach the United States,
but the English prevented this, as they feared he might have designs on
Spanish America. They could have known little about the dilatory,
hesitating æsthete to imagine he was capable of any action of
importance. Lucien was brought a prisoner to England, and he promptly
settled down and made himself comfortable at Ludlow, perfectly contented
to enjoy his books, his scientific dabblings, his pictures, in peace.
Once only did he rouse himself, and that was during the Hundred Days.
The old clan feeling apparently re-awoke, and he was at Napoleon’s side
during that brief period. But as soon as Napoleon had left for St.
Helena, and three months in a Piedmontese prison had cooled his own
blood, he went back to Rome and continued his placid existence until his
death in 1840. Two or three feeble novels and one frigid epic stand to
his credit—further comment appears unnecessary; if a man with Lucien’s
opportunities abandons them in favour of a mild life of artistic
enjoyment, he must be either a great man or a very small man, and Lucien
was not a great man.
But Lucien had at any rate the hardihood to stand up to his terrible
brother about his marriage; Louis and Jerome gave way in a ridiculous
fashion.
Louis allowed himself to be persuaded into marrying Hortense
Beauharnais, Napoleon’s step-daughter, thereby making his sister-in-law
Josephine into his mother-in-law as well. No love was lost between the
newly-married pair, and they drifted apart after a month or two of
married life. A child, Napoleon Charles, was born at the end of 1802,
and Napoleon was popularly credited with being its incestuous father. At
first he did his utmost to check these rumours, but later he tried to
use them for his own ends—a scheme nipped in the bud by the child’s
death from croup in 1807. Napoleon repeatedly tried to reconcile the
parents, and on two occasions he met with success. The product of the
first reconciliation was a child, Napoleon Louis, born in 1804, who died
during the Carbonari insurrection in Italy in 1831, and the product of
the second reconciliation was another child who later became Napoleon
III.
On Louis, for his compliance, honours and wealth were heaped in
profusion. He became a Prince of the Empire, with a million francs a
year; as Constable of France, and consequently a Grand Imperial
Dignitary, he received one-third of a million francs a year; he was
Governor of Paris; a member of the Council of State; in precedence only
the Emperor and Joseph Bonaparte came before him. Louis found himself
the third person in the Empire with an annual income of about eighty
thousand pounds sterling.
Yet even this was not all. Austerlitz had laid Europe at Napoleon’s
feet, and he used his power to the full. The rulers of Bavaria and
Würtemberg became kings; a terse proclamation announced that the Bourbon
house of Naples had “ceased to reign,” and Masséna with sixty thousand
men swept into the country to establish Joseph Bonaparte on the throne.
Louis was given the kingdom of Holland. Just before, Napoleon had
offered the crown of Italy to these two brothers in turn, but they had
refused it, partly on account of the utter dependence of Italy upon
France, and partly because one condition of acceptance was resignation
of all claims upon the throne of France.
Holland, when Louis arrived, was in a bad way. Her people were ground
down by remorseless taxation; the Continental system was ruining them
rapidly; the conscription was exhausting them; and the outlook generally
was hopeless. In fact they were so sunk in despondency that on one
occasion, when Napoleon called a plebiscite among them to decide on
their Government, only one-sixth of the voters troubled to vote. With
the advent of Louis they hoped for better things, but Louis was the kind
of man from whom it is better to hope for nothing. His health was bad,
his domestic troubles upset him, his terrible brother held him
completely under his thumb, and tumbled over like card houses all his
tentative schemes of improvement. Matters in Holland went from bad to
worse. At intervals the wretched Louis roused himself, and tried to help
his subjects, but every time the thunders of Napoleon daunted him.
At last, in 1810, he found the French demanding military occupation of
Holland as the only way to secure the thorough observance of the
Continental system. A French division was marching on Amsterdam, and
fighting was threatened between the Dutch troops and the French. Louis
dropped his kingly dignity as if it were red-hot; he abdicated in favour
of his son, Napoleon Louis, and then, leaving his wife and family
behind, he fled across the frontier and never stopped until he was safe
in Austria. Neither threats nor cajoleries on Napoleon’s part were able
to bring him back to France and the undignified dignities which were
offered him. He settled down with relief in Styria with his books and
his artistic studies. A novel or two and some peculiarly unsatisfying
memoirs were all he left behind after his death.
Hortense, his wife, found means to console herself. The Comte de
Flahault became a frequent visitor at her house in Paris, and a son was
eventually born to her, who became, under the Second Empire, the Duc de
Morny. Flahault himself was with good reason believed to be a son of the
great Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento, so that de Morny had the proud
privilege of calling himself a doubly illegitimate grandson of
Talleyrand, an illegitimate Beauharnais, an illegitimate Flahault and a
natural brother of Napoleon III. A highly satisfactory pedigree, in
truth.
It appeared at first as though Joseph Bonaparte would have better
fortune than Lucien or Louis. He had already held positions of great
responsibility as Ambassador and Plenipotentiary, and in 1806 he became
King of Naples. His rule at first was precarious, for although many of
the Neapolitans acquiesced in his elevation, the English, and the
Bourbons who still held Sicily did their best to make him as
uncomfortable as possible. By landing banditti, galley-slaves and
unpleasant characters generally, they kept Calabria in a blaze. A small
English force was landed, won a battle at Maida, and then had to retire.
But with fifty thousand Frenchmen at his back Joseph gradually wore down
opposition and established himself more or less firmly.
However, this had hardly been accomplished when in 1808 he was suddenly
called back to France and proclaimed King of Spain and the Indies. As
regards the Indies, Joseph was divided from them by the British fleet,
and if the fleet could preserve Sicily for the Italian Bourbons, it
could most certainly preserve America for the Spanish ones. The Atlantic
is a good deal wider than the Straits of Messina. As regards Spain the
position was only not quite so difficult. The whole country was in
rebellion, it is true; three weeks before the streets of Madrid had run
knee-deep with the blood of Spaniards and Frenchmen. Some thirty
thousand of his subjects had to be beaten in a pitched battle before
Joseph could enter his capital, but Napoleon promised him two hundred
thousand French soldiers to support him, and Joseph, a little
bewildered, a little timorous, proceeded with the adventure. He reached
Madrid, and sent his armies forward to subdue his kingdom. In three
weeks one army, under Moncey, had been beaten back from Valencia with
ruinous losses, while twenty thousand men under Dupont were hemmed in at
Baylen and compelled to surrender. A hundred thousand Spaniards were
marching on Madrid, and the King of Spain returned with all speed to the
security of the French armies on the Ebro. Another battle had to be
fought before this sanctuary could be gained. Immediately afterwards
came the news that the pestilent English, for ever intruding themselves
uninvited, had landed in Portugal, beaten Junot and cleared Portugal of
the French by the Convention of Cintra. Napoleon at this moment was at
the Conference of Erfurt, trying to disentangle the politics of Russia,
Austria, Prussia and the Rhenish Confederation, but as soon as he could,
he ended this meeting, issued a few hasty orders to organize his army
against a probable attack by Austria in the spring, and rushed back
across Europe bent upon settling the affair out of hand. Calling up
eighty thousand more troops, he pushed suddenly over the Ebro. The
Spanish armies were shattered in three battles at Gamonal, Espinosa and
Tudela. Once more Joseph was established in Madrid, but the English
again interfered. A skilful thrust by Sir John Moore against the French
communications led to the French armies being wheeled against him
instead of pushing on to complete the overthrow of the Spaniards. In the
middle of this movement Napoleon was called back to Paris on account of
the Austrian trouble and the plottings of Talleyrand and Fouché; Joseph
was left in Madrid, King of a country ablaze with rebellion, and
commander of an army openly contemptuous.
Joseph bore his troubles for five years. Madrid and its environs were
just able to bear the expense of his guard and his court; the rest of
the country was parcelled out among French generals who ruled their
districts despotically as far as the English and the partidas would
allow them. Joseph simply did not count; his pathetic appeals to his
protectors to combine as he wished were disregarded. Time and again he
asked Napoleon either to give him full power or to relieve him of the
burden of his mock sovereignty, but Napoleon bullied him into continuing
with the farce. In 1812 he lost Madrid for a time, and in 1813 he lost
all Spain. He gathered together all his possessions, and tried to retire
in as dignified a fashion as possible. Forced by Wellington to fight at
Vittoria, he was badly beaten and driven off his line of communications.
Everything had to be abandoned. During the flight Joseph left his
carriage by one door while the English Hussars entered it by the other,
pistol shots were fired at him, and altogether he was hardly treated
with the dignity a King deserves. All his court paraphernalia was
captured by the English. His carriage was found stuffed with
masterpieces; he lost gold to the value of a million sterling, and his
plate, his personal belongings, and his lady friends were alike left
behind. Soult at last arrived to hold the line of the Pyrenees, and
Joseph was ignominiously thrust aside.
He pathetically re-entered the limelight in Paris during the fatal early
months of 1814, but he was no longer taken seriously. A proclamation of
his to the people of Paris, practically telling them to have no fear for
he was with them was received with howls of derision. He pottered
helplessly about until the abdication, he figured inconspicuously in the
last gathering of the Bonaparte clan during the Hundred Days, and then
went off to America. He shook from his shoulders with relief the burden
of kingship. As with his brothers, feeble novels and the study of
literature engaged his attention from 1815 until his death.
A third brother of Napoleon’s was also a king; he also was thrust on to
an unwilling people, and he also was thrust off again in course of time.
Jerome was the hope of the family; in 1801, at the age of seventeen, he
appeared to give promise of great gifts. Napoleon sent him off to join
the navy and to acquire manhood in that hardest of all schools. The
First Consul’s plan was defeated, for the officers of the squadron
hastened to make the great man’s young brother as comfortable as
possible.
When Gantheaume, with vastly superior numbers, fell in with and captured
the English _Swiftsure_, Jerome (seventeen years old, if you please) was
sent to receive the English captain’s sword. On the West Indian station
the French admiral bluntly told Jerome that he was bound to become an
admiral anyway, and he should work hard, not to achieve promotion but to
be ready for it. Jerome did not follow his advice. The renewal of war
with England in 1803 found Jerome still in the West Indies, and he left
his ship (which was subsequently captured) and went off to the United
States. At Washington he found the French Ambassador, Pichon, and drew
lavishly on him for funds and embarrassed the worthy man enormously.
Jerome had quite a nice little holiday in America, travelling about from
place to place, making hordes of friends, spending thousands of dollars,
and being generally lionized.
The climax was reached when at the age of nineteen he informed the
wretched Pichon that he had just married a Miss Elizabeth Patterson,
daughter of a worthy Baltimore merchant, and asked him for further funds
to support his new condition. Pichon was horrified. The marriage was
illegal by the law of France, it is true, but Jerome apparently took it
seriously. Napoleon would be mad with rage. Pichon saw himself deprived
of his position and driven into exile. He implored Jerome to go home.
Jerome refused. Pichon cut off supplies. Jerome gaily borrowed from his
new father-in-law. Then came the news that Napoleon had proclaimed
himself Emperor of the French. Madame Jerome Bonaparte naturally wanted
to go to France as soon as possible and enjoy her rank as an Imperial
Princess. Jerome had doubts on the subject, but at last, when his funds
ran low, he set out in one of Mr. Patterson’s ships for Lisbon with his
wife. At Lisbon what Jerome had feared came about. The French consul,
acting on instructions from Paris, announced that he could give only
Jerome a passport; he could not give “Miss Patterson” one. At first
Jerome swore he would stay by his wife, but Napoleon’s emissaries made
him tempting offers. If he abandoned Miss Patterson he would be made an
Imperial Prince; he would have high command; he would receive at least
150,000 francs a year. Jerome succumbed. He told his wife to travel
round by sea to Amsterdam, whence she could more easily reach Paris to
join him. He himself went direct. Naturally by Napoleon’s orders
Elizabeth was denied permission to land at Amsterdam; she at last
realized what Jerome had done, and, as she could do nothing else, she
went to England, where she was cordially received. A child was born to
her while she was in lodgings at Camberwell, and this son’s son was in
1906 Attorney-General of the United States. But Elizabeth was never
recognized by the French Government as Jerome’s wife, and eventually she
went back to the United States. There is a story that many years after
she encountered Jerome and his next wife, Catherine of Würtemberg, in a
picture gallery at Florence. Jerome was a perfect gentleman, and passed
her by after telling Catherine who she was.
Be that as it may, Jerome gained many solid advantages from his
desertion of his wife. His debts were paid and a large income was
allowed him. He was entrusted with the command of a small naval
expedition against Algiers, and on his return to Genoa with a few score
French prisoners whom he had released he was greeted with storms of
salutes and congratulatory addresses. From the tone of the announcements
one would gather that he had anticipated Lord Exmouth’s feat in 1816,
bombarded the city and wrung submission from the Dey by daring and
courage. As a matter of fact the prisoners had been ransomed before he
even started for a few pounds each by a French representative sent
specially over.
It was much the same with the West Indian expedition which followed.
Jerome certainly did considerable damage to English commerce, and
somehow escaped the English cruisers, but the official description of
his exploits seemed to indicate that he had almost subverted the British
Empire.
No sooner was Jerome back in France than he turned soldier. On his early
naval expeditions he had strutted about the deck in a Hussar uniform of
which he was very fond, but apparently he did not see fit to appear
before his troops in naval attire by way of returning the compliment.
Napoleon was already planning to give Jerome a German kingdom, and he
therefore decided that the young man should gain some military
experience along with as much military glory as possible. With Vandamme
as his adviser and a strong _corps d’armée_ at his back, Jerome plunged
into Silesia. The Prussians were stunned by the defeats of Jena and
Auerstädt, and by the relentless pursuit which had followed, and they
gave way before him with hardly a blow struck. One or two fortresses
showed signs of resistance, and were blockaded. The remainder of the
province was soon in Jerome’s hands, and he and Vandamme and the
divisional commanders promptly enriched themselves with plunder. Once
more Jerome’s achievements were blazoned abroad as feats of marvellous
skill. Napoleon was usually successful in obtaining the gold of devotion
in return for the tinsel of propaganda, and now he was exerting all his
arts in his brother’s favour.
Napoleon’s victory of Friedland was followed by the Treaty of Tilsit,
and one of the clauses therein gave Westphalia to Jerome. At the mature
age of twenty-three the young man found himself ruler of two millions of
subjects. Moreover, he was given a royal bride. The King of Würtemberg,
it is true, had not been a king for more than two years, but the house
of Wittelsbach could trace its ancestry back to the time of Charlemagne.
Catherine of Würtemberg was already affianced, but at the Emperor’s
command the engagement was broken off and Catherine was given to Jerome.
Jerome’s American marriage was declared null and void, first by Napoleon
because at the time Jerome was a minor, and secondly by the Metropolitan
of Paris, for no particular reason. The fact that the ceremony had been
performed by a Roman Catholic archbishop with all due regard to the
forms of the Church, did not count.
However, the splendours of the new marriage were such that the old one
might well be forgotten. It took place in the gallery of Diana at the
Tuileries, and was attended by all the shining lights of the Empire.
There was a goodly assembly of Kings, and there were Princes and Grand
Dukes in dozens. Everybody seemed to have made a special effort to wear
as much jewellery as possible, and the display of diamond-sewn dresses
and yard-long ropes of pearls was remembered for years afterwards. The
Democratic Empire had certainly made great strides.
Once married, Jerome departed with his Queen to his kingdom of
Westphalia. The new state was a curious mixture of fragments of other
countries. Hesse, Hanover, Brunswick and Prussia had all contributed to
it (unwillingly), and Calvinists and Catholics were represented in about
equal numbers and with an equal aversion each from the other. The whole
country was ruined by prolonged military occupation; it was loaded with
debt, for Napoleon blithely began to collect money owing to the Elector
of Hesse whom he had dispossessed; nearly one-fourth of the whole area
was claimed by the Emperor to be distributed as endowments to his
officers; a huge army had to be maintained, and a French army of
occupation had to be paid and supplied; a war contribution had to be
paid to the French treasury; and to crown it all the Continental system
was slowly crushing the life out of the industries. During the first
administrative year there was a deficit of five million francs, and this
was the smallest there was during the whole lifetime of the country.
From then onwards the financial measures proceeded on the well-worn way
to ruin, the landmarks thereon being forced loans, repudiation of debt,
and taxes amounting to one-half the total national income. There is
nothing remarkable in the fact that the six years of the existence of
the kingdom were marked by two serious mutinies and three distinct
rebellions.
Jerome himself was quite indifferent to the troubles of his people. He
spent enormous amounts on his palace at Cassel, and in addition he fell
heavily into personal debt despite a Civil List of five million francs a
year. His pleasures were, to say the least, of a dubious sort, and we
find hints everywhere that the orgies at Cassel eclipsed even those at
the Parc-aux-Cerfs in the good old days of the Bourbon régime. Catherine
apparently made no violent objection to this behaviour of her husband’s;
the graceless young scamp seems to have completely bewitched her. He
must have had the time of his life during these years, despite
occasional shocks like the one he experienced when he read in the
_Moniteur_ (the first indication he received) that one quarter of his
kingdom had been annexed to France.
Only once did Jerome appear on active service during this period, and
that was to command thirty or forty thousand men during the Russian
campaign of 1812. He travelled with all the luxuries he could think of,
equerries, cooks, valets, barbers, mistresses, until his headquarters
appeared like a small town. But the hardships of war did not last long;
Jerome was found wanting in military ability. His failure to keep up to
the difficult time-table Napoleon set him during the advance into
Lithuania led to his being placed under Davout’s command. Neither he nor
Davout liked the arrangement, and Jerome threw up his command and went
back to Cassel.
Here he enjoyed himself for one more year. Even he had flinched from
reviving the old _droit du seigneur_, but he did his best in that
direction without that amount of ceremony. But the sands were running
out as the French armies fell back from the Niemen to the Oder, from the
Oder to the Elbe, and at last the battle of Leipzig laid open all the
country between the Elbe and the Rhine to the triumphant Allies. The
Kingdom of Westphalia vanished in a night, like a dream; the Westphalian
army went over to the Allies _en bloc_, and Jerome returned to France
with barely two hundred men at his back.
The Hundred Days gave Jerome one last chance of displaying his manhood,
and, curiously enough, he made the most of it. He was given command of a
division of Reille’s corps in the Waterloo campaign, and he led it with
unexpected dash and vigour. He fought heroically at Quatre Bras,
exposing himself recklessly in the dreadful fighting in the wood. At
Waterloo he headed the attack on Hougomont, leading assault after
assault with unflinching bravery. He was wounded, but remained in
action, and at the close of the day he was seen striving to rally his
men when they broke panic-stricken before the allied advance.
Waterloo almost atones in the general estimation for Jerome’s long and
useless life. After the second Restoration he drifted idly about Europe,
accompanied by his devoted Catherine; when the Orleans monarchy fell he
hastened back to France. Along with Louis Napoleon he planned the _coup
d’état_, and for the rest of his life, until 1860, he was once more a
prominent subject of the French Empire. Napoleon III. made him a
Marshal; his son married a princess of the house of Savoy, and he died
comfortably in bed at the age of seventy-six. He never met with any
fatal retribution for his callous desertion of Elizabeth Patterson, or
for the wild debauchery of his youth. There seems to be no moral to
attach to the tale of his career.
Of the remaining descendants in the male line of the house of Bonaparte
there is little to tell. One of them, Lucien, a grandson of Lucien,
Napoleon’s brother, rose to the eminence of Cardinal; one or two of them
have shown ability in various branches of science; the curious tendency
to literature has repeatedly cropped out; but none of them has ever
achieved anything really striking. Their novels are more feeble even
than Garibaldi’s, while their political achievements are of course
beneath comparison. Some of them have fought duels, and some of them
have committed manslaughter. Some of them have even attained the
dazzling heights of the French chamber of deputies. But there is not one
of them who would receive two lines of notice in any fair-sized book of
reference were it not for his relationship to the great Napoleon. The
present head of the house is Napoleon Victor Jerome, who married in 1910
a Coburg princess, a member of the royal family of Belgium. He is
Napoleon VI., if the principle of legitimacy can yet be applied to the
house of Bonaparte; anyway, he shows not the least desire to become
Napoleon VI.
Had Napoleon had no brothers, he would probably have been more
successful; had he had any brothers of equal ability they would have
pulled each other down in Europe, if they had not cut each other’s
throats years before in Corsica; as it is, he stands as unique in his
family as he does in his age.
[Illustration: JOSEPH NAPOLEON ROI DE NAPLES et de SICILE
ET ROI D’ESPAGNE ET DES INDES
_Né le 7 janvier 1768. Sacré et couronné le
3e Mars 1806._]