Louise and Napoleon
An armistice with Russia was concluded by Napoleon June 21, and on the
twenty-fifth of June one was arranged with Prussia also, at Tilsit. The
next day an interview took place between the Czar and Napoleon, at which
the King of Prussia was present. Napoleon’s egotism and haughtiness
clashed continually with Frederick William’s directness and honesty. The
King met the insolent victor with a noble pride and bore his misfortunes
with a dignity which seemed to increase the enmity of the French
Emperor. Upon this occasion Alexander conceived the unfortunate idea
that the presence of the Queen might facilitate the deliberations and
that her graciousness and the nobility of her character would soften the
stern purpose of the conqueror. Alexander urged the King to summon his
wife to Piktuppönen, a village east of Tilsit, where he returned each
evening from the conferences. The King was finally persuaded, and wrote
to his wife of the mission proposed for her. He withheld his own
judgment and wishes, however, and allowed her to decide the matter
entirely for herself. The Queen received the letter while sitting with a
circle of intimate women friends, glanced at it hastily, and silently
left the room. An hour later she reappeared with a tear-stained face and
told the company the contents of the letter. Some of those present
advised against the action as undignified and useless. But she
explained: “If there is any one who believes that I can save even one
village more to the fatherland by this step, I am in duty bound to test
that belief. If I must take this painful step, however, I do not wish to
do it unprepared; I must know just what to say and what to demand.”
Hufeland tells us that the Queen was beside herself at the thought of
meeting the slanderer and defamer, and said: “This is the most cruel
sacrifice that I have yet made for my people, and only the hope of being
useful to them makes it possible for me.” She wrote in her journal in
regard to it: “God knows what a struggle it costs me! For though I do
not hate the man, I regard him as the author of the misfortunes of the
King and our country. I admire his talents, but I cannot admire his
character, which is evidently false and deceitful. It will be very
difficult for me to be polite and agreeable to him. But this hard task
is demanded of me, and I am already used to sacrifice.”
She left Memel and arrived on the evening of July 4 at Piktuppönen. Here
she received her instructions from Minister Hardenberg as to what she
was principally to dwell upon in the interview. On July 5 she received a
visit from the Czar, and on the sixth Napoleon sent her greeting through
General Caulaincourt, and an invitation to dinner. With a French guard
of honor she drove in a state carriage with eight horses to Tilsit,—and
stopped at the house where her husband lodged. An hour after her arrival
Napoleon, mounted on a white Arabian horse and accompanied by a large
escort, rode to her door. The King and the princes received him at the
staircase. Napoleon, holding his riding-whip in his hand, took off his
hat, bowed quickly right and left, and ascended the steps to the Queen’s
room, into which the King led him and then left him alone with her.
After the first painful moments, the Queen expressed her concern that he
had been obliged to climb such a wretched stairway to visit her.
Napoleon answered gallantly: “On the road to such a goal, one should
fear no obstacles.” She inquired how the northern climate agreed with
him. And then she turned the conversation to the negotiations and told
him that she had come to try to persuade him to make reasonable terms of
peace. And when he loftily inquired: “But how could you go to war with
me?” she answered, “Sire, if we deceived ourselves, it was but a natural
consequence of the fame of the great Frederick.” This reply was
overheard by the celebrated Talleyrand, Napoleon’s clever minister. He
is said to have warned Napoleon of the impression the Queen might make
upon him, in these words: “Sire! shall posterity be able to say that a
beautiful queen has caused you to forego the full results of your
greatest victory?” But Napoleon scarcely needed any such warning from
Satan, he was Satanic enough himself. After the Queen’s remark he led
the conversation to indifferent subjects, asked about the material of
her dress, etc. But Louise would not be turned from her purpose. With
warmth and even with tears in her eyes she pleaded with him not to
impose upon the country this unreasonable burden of a half billion
francs for war indemnity and the numerous garrisons, and especially to
promise her that Danzig and Magdeburg should remain Prussian. “I will
think it over,” he answered, holding out a prospect of an acceptable
peace. The conversation lasted a quarter of an hour.
At noon the King and Queen dined with the Emperor of the French; she at
his right next to the Czar and the King at his left. Napoleon was very
amiable. He was good-humored and talkative, and joked about the danger
she had run the previous autumn, when at the King’s headquarters, of
being taken prisoner by his hussars. The conversation turned on the
cession of the provinces, which Napoleon thought the King ought not to
take so much to heart. The King replied: “You do not know how painful it
is to lose inherited lands in which the dearest memories of childhood
are rooted, and which one can as little forget, as he can his cradle.”
“His cradle,” sneered Napoleon, “when the child has become a man he no
longer has time to think of his cradle.”
“Oh! yes,” answered the King, “one can no more forget his youth than he
can deny it, and a man of sentiment will always think with gratitude of
the cradle where he lay as a child.”
[Illustration: _NAPOLEON BONAPARTE_]
The Queen sought to give the conversation another direction by saying:
“The mother’s heart is the only cradle which one never forgets.” She had
in mind the respect which Napoleon felt for his own mother, and
pointedly inquired about the health of “Madame Bonaparte.”
In the evening the Queen drove back to the village. On July 7 she again
received an invitation to dine with Napoleon, but before leaving for
Tilsit, she received a letter from the King with the news that the
conditions of peace were merciless. Therefore all hopes of the Queen’s
success vanished, and this second journey to Tilsit was an almost
intolerable martyrdom. Exciting discussions took place, and neither the
King nor the Queen concealed their feelings and opinions. As she took
her leave Napoleon picked a magnificent rose from the vine at the window
and offered it to her. Louise was about to refuse it, but quickly
recovering herself, she took it with the words: “At least with
Magdeburg?”
To which Napoleon answered dryly: “Your Majesty will kindly remember
that it is I who offer, and you who accept.”
As she threw herself weeping bitterly against the cushions of her
carriage, she sighed and, pointing to the house, exclaimed: “In that
place I have been horribly circumvented.”
Napoleon wrote on July eighth to his Consort Josephine: “The Queen of
Prussia is really a charming woman; she is very amiable to me, but you
need not be jealous. I am like an oil-cloth, over which such things
slide without touching the inside. To play the gallant on such occasions
does not cost much.” While a prisoner at St. Helena he wrote: “She was
perfectly unaffected in her conversation, and remained mistress of it in
spite of all the dexterity which I employed and all the trouble which I
took. She always returned to her subject, and always with so much tact
and delicacy that it was impossible to take offence.”
A year after this fruitless sacrifice Louise wrote to a friend:
“I suffer unutterably. Reproaches are heaped upon me over and over
again. What can I answer? I sigh and swallow my tears. A year ago
yesterday I had my last interview with Napoleon. Ah! what a
recollection! How I suffered, suffered more for others than for
myself! I wept and pleaded in the name of love and humanity, in the
name of our misfortunes and the laws that govern the world. And I was
only a woman—a weak creature, and yet superior to this adversary, so
cold and heartless. The King is still greater than his enemy, even
though his kingdom has been diminished one-half. He only treated with
the wicked one under pressure of necessity and will not enter into an
alliance with him. That this will sometime prove to be a blessing to
Prussia is my firm belief.”
With such lofty sentiments this deeply wounded woman was able benignly
to forgive the man who was to her the incarnation of evil, the boundless
suffering which he had caused to her, to her family, and to her people.
She was too noble to share the petty hatred of Napoleon shown by weaker
natures. In former days, when every one belonging to the court joined in
scorning the “upstart,” she kept silence. Shortly before her last
illness, one day when her sorrowful glance fell upon the portrait of the
Emperor, a titled lady in her company passionately denounced the
oppressor. The Queen quickly turned and rebuked the outbreak with a
gentle look and word: “If I have forgiven him the injuries he has done
me, what reason have you not to forgive him?” And with a gesture of her
hand, as though in blessing to her great enemy, she left the room.
The Tilsit peace, concluded on the night of July 9-10 was more
detrimental to Prussia than the previous war had been. The fortresses of
Stettin, Cüstrin, and Glogau remained in the hands of the conqueror as
pledges for the war indemnity. This indemnity, which included the
support of forty thousand French troops and all sorts of unreasonable
extortions, amounting, at the end of the year 1808, to at least six
hundred million francs, was ruthlessly exacted from a poor land already
robbed of its richest territories. Agriculture and art life were
crippled, commerce restricted, and the country impoverished.
Though the King and his people tried conscientiously to meet all these
oppressive demands, Napoleon purposely delayed the evacuation of the
country, paid no attention to representations made him, treated the
Prussian ambassador like a servant, and kept faith with nobody. “Is it
not enough to make one despair?” asked Louise in a letter. “Ah! my God,
why hast Thou forsaken us?” Her last comforter on earth was Stein, who,
with his “great heart and comprehensive mind,” she hoped might still
find a way out of this misery.
The Queen, supported by the King’s brothers and the patriotic Princess
Louise Radziwill, a sister of Prince Louis Ferdinand, undertook to
persuade the King that Stein was the only saviour in this time of need;
and begged him to recall to the head of the ministry the man who had
once been dismissed in disfavor. The King agreed; and Stein, generously
forgetting the injustice which had been done him, accepted. He arrived
in Memel, September 30, 1807, and was at once placed at the head of the
government by the King. But he encountered a strong party bent upon
deposing him and which put many obstacles in his way. Louise wrote to
him at that time: “I entreat you to be patient during these first
months, so that we shall have nothing to regret, and all shall not be
lost. I implore you to consider this for the sake of the King, the
country, my children, and myself. Patience!”
At length the commission appointed to fix the war indemnity finished its
work. The poor, depleted country was really to pay “only” one hundred
and fifty-four million francs, and until this was accomplished, it must
maintain a French army and allow the taxes to be collected by the French
in the provinces occupied by them! Even Stein, when he heard of these
terrible demands, was turned to stone. This new and dreadful calamity
was a crushing blow for a weak woman. It is no wonder that she wrote in
October, 1807:
“Even I am losing my fortitude. It is terribly hard, especially as it
is undeserved. My future is very sad. If we may only keep Berlin; but
sometimes I have an awful presentiment that he will take it from us
also and make it the capital of another kingdom. In that event I have
only one wish—to emigrate to some distant land and to live a private
life and forget—if possible. Alas! poor Prussia! Deserted through
weakness, persecuted by insolence, depleted by misfortune, we must
perish. Savary, the French ambassador, has assured us that Russia’s
intervention would not help us, and he has advised us to sell our
jewels and valuables. Think of his daring to say this!”
The mockery of this advice wounded Louise, who was already accustomed to
privations and self-denial. During her stay in Memel money was often
lacking for daily expenses. At that time many citizens fared more
sumptuously than the royal family. The King sent his golden dinner
service to the mint to be turned into money to lighten the burden of his
oppressed subjects. Only a single golden plate remained of all the
inherited antique treasures. The princes and princesses also renounced a
third of their yearly incomes. It was at that time that the hard-pressed
King sent his eldest daughter, afterwards Empress of Russia, a
five-thaler note for a new dress, adding that she must make that do, as
it was all he could spare.
Napoleon had been unyielding. Even the mission of Prince William to
Paris was in vain. They were obliged to resign themselves to the demands
of the conqueror. Stein signed a treaty September 3, 1808, in Berlin, by
which it was finally agreed that Prussia was to pay one hundred and
forty million francs. The fortresses of Glogau, Stettin, and Cüstrin
were to be held by the French until the debt was fully extinguished.
Until the first hundred million francs were paid the taxes were to be
collected by the French and the country was to be under their regime,
and during ten years the Prussians were to keep only 42,000 men under
arms. It was now necessary to raise great sums of money as quickly as
possible. By alienation of royal domains and strictest economy in all
branches of government, a large amount was at last collected, and by the
payment of this and by giving mortgage deeds, at last, at the end of the
year 1808, the French (who continually sought to put obstacles in their
way) were induced to evacuate the country.