EXTENSION OF NAPOLEON’S EMPIRE—FAMILY AFFAIRS
Napoleon’s influence in Europe was now at its zenith. He was literally
“king of kings,” as he was popularly called, and the Bonaparte family
was rapidly displacing the Bourbon. Joseph had been made King of Naples
in 1806. Eliza was Princess of Lucques and Piombino. Louis, married to
Hortense, had been King of Holland since 1806. Pauline had been the
Princess Borghese since 1803; Caroline, the wife of Murat, was Grand
Duchess of Cleves and Berg; Jerome was King of Westphalia; Eugène de
Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy, was married to a princess of Bavaria.
The members of Napoleon’s family were elevated only on condition that
they act strictly in accordance with his plans. They must marry so as to
cement the ties necessary to his kingdom. They must arrange their time,
form their friendships, spend their money, as it best served the
interests of his great scheme of conquest. The interior affairs of their
kingdoms were in reality centralized in his hands as perfectly as those
of France. He watched the private and public conduct of his kings and
nobles, and criticised them with absolute frankness and extraordinary
common sense. The ground on which he protected them is well explained in
the following letter, written in January, 1806, to Count Miot de Mélito:
[Illustration:
JOSEPH BONAPARTE IN HIS CORONATION ROBES. 1808.
Engraved by C. S. Pradier in 1813, after Gérard.]
“You are going to rejoin my brother. You will tell him that I have
made him King of Naples; that he will continue to be Grand Elector,
and that nothing will be changed as regards his relations with
France. But impress upon him that the least hesitation, the
slightest wavering, will ruin him entirely. I have another person in
my mind who will replace him should he refuse.... At present all
feelings of affection yield to state reasons. I recognize only those
who serve me as relations. My fortune is not attached to the name of
Bonaparte, but to that of Napoleon. It is with my fingers and with
my pen that I make children. To-day I can love only those whom I
esteem. Joseph must forget all our ties of childhood. Let him make
himself esteemed. Let him acquire glory. Let him have a leg broken
in battle. Then I shall esteem him. Let him give up his old ideas.
Let him not dread fatigue. Look at me: the campaign I have just
terminated, the movement, the excitement, have made me stout. I
believe that if all the kings of Europe were to coalesce against me,
I should have a ridiculous paunch.”
Joseph, bent on being a great king, boasted now and then to Napoleon of
his position in Naples. His brother never failed to silence him with the
truth, if it was blunt and hard to digest.
“When you talk about the fifty thousand enemies of the queen, you
make me laugh.... You exaggerate the degree of hatred which the
queen has left behind at Naples: you do not know mankind. There are
not twenty persons who hate her as you suppose, and there are not
twenty persons who would not surrender to one of her smiles. The
strongest feeling of hatred on the part of a nation is that inspired
by another nation. Your fifty thousand men are the enemies of the
French.”
With Jerome, Napoleon had been particularly incensed because of his
marriage with Miss Patterson. In 1804 he wrote of that affair:
“... Jerome is wrong to think that he will be able to count upon any
weakness on my part, for, not having the rights of a father, I
cannot entertain for him the feeling of a father; a father allows
himself to be blinded, and it pleases him to be blinded because he
identifies his son with himself.... But what am I to Jerome? Sole
instrument of my destiny, I owe nothing to my brothers. They have
made an abundant harvest out of what I have accomplished in the way
of glory; but for all that, they must not abandon the field and
deprive me of the aid I have a right to expect from them. They will
cease to be anything for me, directly they take a road opposed to
mine. If I exact so much from my brothers who have already rendered
many services, if I have abandoned the one who, in mature age
[Lucien], refused to follow my advice, what must not Jerome, who is
still young, and who is known only for his neglect of duty, expect?
If he does nothing for me, I shall see in this the decree of
destiny, which has decided that I shall do nothing for him....”
[Illustration:
JEROME BONAPARTE. 1808.
“Engraved by I. G. Müller, knight, and Frederich Müller, son,
engravers to his majesty the King of Würtemberg. After a design made
at Cassel by Madame Kinson.”]
Jerome yielded later to his brother’s wishes, and in 1807 was rewarded
with the new kingdom of Westphalia. Napoleon kept close watch of him,
however, and his letters are full of admirable counsels. The following
is particularly valuable, showing, as it does, that Napoleon believed a
government would be popular and enduring only in proportion to the
liberty and prosperity it gave the citizens.
“What the German peoples desire with impatience [he told Jerome], is
that persons who are not of noble birth, and who have talents, shall
have an equal right to your consideration and to public employment
(with those who are of noble birth); that every sort of servitude
and of intermediate obligations between the sovereign and the lowest
class of the people should be entirely abolished. The benefits of
the Code Napoleon, the publicity of legal procedure, the
establishment of the jury system, will be the distinctive
characteristics of your monarchy.... I count more on the effect of
these benefits for the extension and strengthening of your kingdom,
than upon the result of the greatest victories. Your people ought to
enjoy a liberty, an equality, a well-being, unknown to the German
peoples.... What people would wish to return to the arbitrary
government of Prussia, when it has tasted the benefits of a wise and
liberal administration? The peoples of Germany, France, Italy,
Spain, desire equality, and demand that liberal ideas should
prevail.... Be a constitutional king.”
Louis in Holland was never a king to Napoleon’s mind. He especially
disliked his quarrels with his wife. In 1807 Napoleon wrote Louis,
apropos of his domestic relations, a letter which is a good example of
scores of others he sent to one and another of his kings and princes
about their private affairs.
[Illustration:
MARIE PAULINE BONAPARTE, PRINCESS BORGHESE.
This graceful portrait of the most beautiful of Napoleon’s sisters, is
from the brush of Madame Benoit, and belongs to the Versailles
collection.]
“You govern that country too much like a Capuchin. The goodness of a
king should be full of majesty.... A king orders, and asks nothing
from any one.... When people say of a king that he is good, his
reign is a failure.... Your quarrels with the queen are known to the
public. You should exhibit at home that paternal and effeminate
character you show in your manner of governing.... You treat a young
wife as you would command a regiment. Distrust the people by whom
you are surrounded; they are nobles.... You have the best and most
virtuous of wives and you render her miserable. Allow her to dance
as much as she likes; it is in keeping with her age. I have a wife
who is forty years of age; from the field of battle I write to her
to go to balls, and you wish a young woman of twenty to live in a
cloister, or, like a nurse, to be always washing her children....
Render the mother of your children happy. You have only one way of
doing so, by showing her esteem and confidence. Unfortunately you
have a wife who is too virtuous: if you had a coquette, she would
lead you by the nose. But you have a proud wife, who is offended and
grieved at the mere idea that you can have a bad opinion of her. You
should have had a wife like some of those whom I know in Paris. She
would have played you false, and you would have been at her feet....
“NAPOLEON.”
With his sisters he was quite as positive. While Josephine adapted
herself with grace and tact to her great position, the Bonaparte
sisters, especially Pauline, were constantly irritating somebody by
their vanity and jealousy. The following letter to Pauline shows how
little Napoleon spared them when their performances came to his ears:
“MADAME AND DEAR SISTER: I have learned with pain that you have not
the good sense to conform to the manners and customs of the city of
Rome; that you show contempt for the inhabitants, and that your eyes
are unceasingly turned towards Paris. Although occupied with vast
affairs, I nevertheless desire to make known my wishes, and I hope
that you will conform to them.
“I love your husband and his family, be amiable, accustom yourself
to the usages of Rome, and put this in your head: that if you follow
bad advice you will no longer be able to count upon me. You may be
sure that you will find no support in Paris, and that I shall never
receive you there without your husband. If you quarrel with him, it
will be your fault, and France will be closed to you. You will
sacrifice your happiness and my esteem.
“BONAPARTE.”
[Illustration:
ELISA BACCIOCHI, GRAND DUCHESS OF TUSCANY, ELDEST SISTER OF NAPOLEON
(1777–1820).
Engraved by Morghen in 1814, after Counis.]
This supervision of policy, relations, and conduct extended to his
generals. The case of General Berthier is one to the point. Chief of
Napoleon’s staff in Italy, he had fallen in love at Milan with a Madame
Visconti, and had never been able to conquer his passion. In Egypt
Napoleon called him “chief of the lovers’ faction,” that part of the
army which, because of their desire to see wives or sweethearts, were
constantly revolting against the campaign, and threatening to desert.
In 1804 Berthier had been made marshal, and in 1806 Napoleon wished to
give him the princedom of Neufchatel; but it was only on condition that
he give up Madame de Visconti, and marry.
“I exact only one condition, which is that you get married. Your
passion has lasted long enough. It has become ridiculous; and I have
the right to hope that the man whom I have called my companion in
arms, who will be placed alongside of me by posterity, will no
longer abandon himself to a weakness without example.... You know
that no one likes you better than I do, but you know also that the
first condition of my friendship is that it must be made subordinate
to my esteem.”
Berthier fled to Josephine for help, weeping like a child; but she could
do nothing, and he married the woman chosen for him. Three months after
the ceremony, the husband of Madame de Visconti died and Berthier,
broken-hearted, wrote to the Prince Borghese:
“You know how often the emperor pressed me to obtain a divorce for
Madame de Visconti. But a divorce was always repugnant to the
feelings in which I was educated, and therefore I waited. To-day
Madame de Visconti is free, and I might have been the happiest of
men. But the emperor forced me into a marriage which hinders me from
uniting myself to the only woman I ever loved. Ah, my dear prince,
all that the emperor has done and may yet do for me, will be no
compensation for the eternal misfortunes to which he has condemned
me.”
Never was Napoleon more powerful than at the end of the period we have
been tracing so rapidly, never had he so looked the emperor. An observer
who watched him through the Te Deum sung at Notre Dame in his honor, on
his return from Tilsit, says: “His features, always calm and serious,
recalled the cameos which represent the Roman emperors. He was small;
still his whole person, in this imposing ceremony, was in harmony with
the part he was playing. A sword glittering with precious stones was at
his side, and the glittering diamond called the “Regent” formed its
pommel. Its brilliancy did not let us forget that this sword was the
sharpest and the most victorious that the world had seen since those of
Alexander and Cæsar.”
Certainly he never worked more prodigiously. The campaigns of 1805–1807
were, in spite of their rapid movement,—indeed, because of it,—terribly
fatiguing for him; that they were possible at all was due mainly to the
fact that they had been made on paper so many times in his study. When
he was consul the only room opening from his study was filled with
enormous maps of all the countries of the world. This room was presided
over by a competent cartographer. Frequently these maps were brought to
the study and spread upon the floor. Napoleon would get down upon them
on all fours, and creep about, compass and red pencil in hand, comparing
and measuring distances, and studying the configuration of the land. If
he was in doubt about anything, he referred it to his librarian, who was
expected to give him the fullest details.
Attached to his cabinet were skilful translators, whose business was not
only to translate diplomatic correspondence, but to gather from foreign
sources full information about the armies of his enemies. Méneval
declares that the emperor knew the condition of foreign armies as well
as he did that of his own.
The amount of information he had about other lands was largely due to
his ability to ask questions. When he sent to an agent for a report, he
rattled at him a volley of questions, always to the point; and the agent
knew that it would never do to let one go unanswered.
While carrying on the Austrian and Prussian campaigns of 1805–1807,
Napoleon showed, as never before, his extraordinary capacity for
attending to everything. The number of despatches he sent out was
incredible. In the first three months of 1807, while he was in Poland,
he wrote over seventeen hundred letters and despatches.
It was not simply war, the making of kingdoms, the directions of his
new-made kings; minor affairs of the greatest variety occupied him.
While at Boulogne, tormented by the failure of the English invasion and
the war against Austria, he ordered that horse races should be
established “in those parts of the empire the most remarkable for the
horses they breed; prizes shall be awarded to the fleetest horses.” The
very day after the battle of Friedland, he was sending orders to Paris
about the form and site of a statue to the memory of the Bishop of
Vannes. He criticised from Poland the quarrels of Parisian actresses,
ordered canals, planned there for the Bourse and the Odeon Theatre. The
newspapers he watched as he did when in Paris, reprimanded this editor,
suspended that, forbade the publication of news of disasters to the
French navy, censured every item honorable to his enemies. To read the
bulletins issued from Jena to Friedland, one would believe that the
writer had no business other than that of regulating the interior
affairs of France. This care of details went, as Pasquier says, to the
“point of minuteness, or, to speak plainly, to that of charlatanism;”
but it certainly did produce a deep impression upon France. That he
could establish himself five hundred leagues from Paris, in the heart of
winter, in a country encircled by his enemies, and yet be in daily
communication with his capital, could direct even its least important
affairs as if he were present, could know what every person of
influence, from the Secretary of State to the humblest newspaper man,
was doing, caused a superstitious feeling to rise in France, and in all
Europe, that the emperor of the French people was not only omnipotent,
but omnipresent.