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Books: The Empress Josephine

L >> Louise Muhlbach >> The Empress Josephine




This hostility of the Bonaparte family was not unknown to Josephine;
her soul suffered under these ceaseless attacks, her heart was
agonized at the thought that the efforts of her sisters-in-law might
finally succeed in withdrawing from her the love of her husband. She
was persuaded that even in the Bonaparte family she needed a
protector, that she must look for one among the brothers, so as to
counteract the enmity of the sisters; and she chose for this Louis
Bonaparte. She entreated Napoleon to give to his young, beloved
brother the hand of her daughter Hortense. It would be a new bond
chaining Bonaparte to her--a new fortress for her love--if he would
but make her daughter his sister-in-law, and his brother her son-in-
law.

Napoleon did not oppose her wishes; he consented that Hortense
should be married to his brother. It is true the young people were
not consulted; for the first time, Josephine's selfishness got the
better of her love for her child--she sacrificed the welfare of her
daughter to secure her own happiness.

But Hortense loved another, yet she yielded to the entreaties and
tears of her mother, and became the wife of this laconic, timid
young man, whose meagre, unpretending appearance resembled so little
the ideal which her maidenly heart had pictured of her future
husband.

Louis on his side had not the slightest inclination for Hortense; he
never would have chosen her for his wife, for their characters were
too different; their inclinations and wishes were not in sympathy
with each other. But through obedience to the wishes of his brother,
he accepted the proffered hand of Josephine's daughter, and became
the husband of the beautiful, blond-haired Hortense de Beauharnais.

In February, of the year 1802, the marriage of the young couple took
place, and this family event was celebrated with the most
magnificent festivities. Josephine's joy and happiness were
complete--she had thrown a bridge over the abyss, and was now secure
against the hostilities of her sisters-in-law, by giving up her own
daughter.

Every thing was resplendent with beauty and joy at these
festivities; every thing wore an appearance of happiness; only the
countenances of the newly-married couple were grave and sad, and
their deep melancholy contrasted strikingly with the happiness of
which they themselves were the cause. Adorned with diamonds and
flowers, Hortense appeared to be a stranger to all the pomp which
surrounded her, and to be occupied only with her own sad communings.
Louis Bonaparte was pale and grave, like Hortense; he seldom
addressed a word to the young wife that the orders of his brother
had given him; and she avoided her husband's looks, perhaps to
hinder him from reading there the indifference and dislike she felt
for him. [Footnote: "Memoires sur l'Imperatrice Josephine, la Cour
de Navarre," etc., par Mlle. Ducrest, vol. i., p. 49.]

But Josephine was happy, for she knew the noble, faithful, and
generous spirit of the man to whom she had given her daughter; and
she trusted that the two young hearts, now that they were linked
together, would soon love one another. She hoped much more from this
alliance; she hoped not only to find in it a shield against domestic
animosities, but also to give to her husband, even if indirectly,
the children he so much desired--for the offspring of his brother
and the daughter of his Josephine would be nearly the same as his
own, and they could adopt and love them as such. This was
Josephine's hope, the dream of her happiness, when she gave her
daughter in marriage to the brother of her husband.

The fact that the first consul was childless was not only a family
solicitude, it was also a political question. The people themselves
had changed the face of affairs, they had by solemn vote decided to
confer the consulate for life upon Napoleon, who had previously been
elected for ten years only. In other words, the French people had
chosen Bonaparte for their master and ruler, and he now lacked but
the title to be king. Every one felt and knew that this consulate
for life was but the prelude to royalty; that the golden laurel-
wreath of the first consul would soon be converted into a golden
crown, so as to secure to France an enduring peace, and to make firm
its political situation.

With her keen political instinct, Josephine trembled at the thought
that the King or Emperor Bonaparte would have to establish for
himself a dynasty--that he would have to appease the apprehensions
of France by offering to the nation a son who would be his
legitimate heir and successor. Thus was the subject of divorce kept
hanging over her head until the conviction was forced upon her mind
that some day Napoleon would be led into sacrificing his love to
politics. Josephine was conscious of it, and consequently the hopes
of Napoleon's future greatness, which so pleased his brothers and
sisters, only made her sorrowful, and she therefore entreated
Bonaparte with tender appeal to remain content with the high dignity
he already possessed, and not to tempt fate, nor to allow it to bear
him up to a dizzy height, from which the stormy winds of adversity
might the more easily prostrate him.

Bonaparte listened to her with a smile, and generally in silence.
Once only he replied to her: "Has not your prophetess in Martinique
told you that one day you would be more than a queen?"

"And the prophecy is already realized," exclaimed Josephine. "The
wife of the consul for life is more than a queen, for her husband is
the elect of thirty millions of hearts!" Bonaparte laughed, and said
nothing.

Another time Josephine asked him--"Now, Bonaparte, when are you
going to make me Empress of the Gauls?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "What an idea," said he; "the little
Josephine an empress!"

Josephine answered him with the words of Corneille--"'Le premier qui
fut roi fut un soldat heureux'" (the first king was a successful
soldier); and she added, "The wife of this fortunate soldier shares
his rank."

He placed his small, white hand, adorned with rings, under her chin,
and gazed at her with a deep, strange look.

"Now, Josephine," said he, after a short pause, "your successful
soldier is only, for the present, consul for life, and you are
sharing his rank. Be careful, then, that the wife of the first
consul surrounds herself with all the brilliancy and the pomp which
beseem her dignity. No more economy, no more modest simplicity! The
industry of France is at a low ebb--we must make it rise. We must
give receptions; we must prove to France that the court of a consul
can be as splendid as that of a king. You understand what pomp is--
none better than you! Now show yourself brilliant, magnificent, so
that the other ladies may imitate you. But, no foreign stuffs! Silk
and velvet from the fabrics of Lyons!"

"Yes," said Josephine, with charming tenderness, "and when afterward
my bills become due, you cut them down--you find them too high."

"I only cut down what is too exorbitant," said Bonaparte, laughing.
"I have no objection for you to give to the manufacturers any amount
of work and profit, but I do not wish them to cheat you." [Footnote:
Abrantes, "Memoires" vol. iv.]

Henceforth, the consulate began gradually to exhibit a splendor and
pomp which were behind no princely court, and which relegated, amid
the dark legends of the fabulous past, the fraternity and the
equality of the republic. The absence of pretension, and the
simplicity of Malmaison, were now done away with; everywhere the
consul for life was followed by the splendors of his dignity, and
everywhere Josephine was accompanied by her court.

For now she had a court, and an anteroom, with all its intrigues and
flatteries; and its conspiracies already wove their chains around
the consul and his wife. It was not suddenly, it was not
spontaneously, that this court of the first consul was formed; two
years were required for its organization--two years of unceasing
labor on the new code of regulations, which etiquette dictated from
the remembrances of the past to the palace-officers of the Consul
Bonaparte. "How was this in times past? What was the practice?" Such
were the constant questions in the interior of the Tuileries, and
for the answers they appealed to Madame de Montesson, to the old
courtiers, the servants and adherents of royalty. Instead of
creating every thing new, they turned by degrees to the usages and
manners of the past. Always and in all countries have there been
seen at courts caricatures and persons of ill-mannered awkwardness;
at the opening of the court of the first consul it is probable that
these existed, and appeared still more strange to those who had been
used to the manners, traditions, and language of the ancient court
of Versailles. Their awkwardness, however, was soon overcome; and
Josephine understood so well the rare art of presiding at a court
establishment--she was such an accomplished mistress of refined
manners and of noble deportment--she united to the perfect manners
of the old nobility the most exquisite adroitness, and she knew so
well how to adapt all these advantages to every new circumstance--
that soon every one bowed to her sovereignty and submitted to her
laws.

From the glittering halls of the Tuileries there soon disappeared
the sword and the uniform, to be replaced by the gold-embroidered
dress, the silk stockings, and the chapeau bras; and on the glassy
floors of the Tuileries generals and marshals appeared as fine
cavaliers, who, submitting to the rules of etiquette, left behind
with their regiments the coarse language of the camp. Many of these
young generals and heroes had married the beautiful but impoverished
daughters of the aristocrats of old monarchical France. These young
women, who were the representatives of the ancient noblesse, brought
to the Tuileries the traditions of their mothers, and distinguished
themselves by the ease of their courtly deportment and their
graceful manners; and they thus unconsciously became the teachers of
the other young women, who, like their husbands, owed their
aristocratic name only to the sword and to their fresh laurels, and
not to ancient escutcheons.

In the Tuileries and in St. Cloud there were reception-days,
audience-days, and great and small levees, at which were assembled
all that France possessed of rank, name, and fame, and where the
ambassadors of all the powers accredited at the court of the consul,
where all the higher clergy and the pope's nuncio, appeared in full
dress.

Bonaparte ventured to remove still further from the landmarks of the
revolution, and from its so-called conquests. He restored to France
the church; he reopened the temples of religion, and he also gave
back to the people their priests.

Just as in the days of old monarchical France, every Sunday, and at
every festival, a solemn mass was said at St. Cloud; and in the
glass gallery on the way to the chapel, Bonaparte received petitions
and granted short audiences. France, with the instinct of its old
inclinations and habits, readily returned to this new order of
things; and even those who once had with enthusiasm saluted the
Goddess of Reason, went now, with hands joined in prayer and eyes
bent low, to Notre Dame, to offer again their supplications to the
God of Love.

Every thing seemed to return to the old track, every thing was as in
the days preceding the revolution--the re-establishment of the
throne, the national, willing approbation that the republic had
become a monarchy, was, however, still wanting.

Finally, on the 18th of May, 1804, France spoke out the decisive
word, and, by the voice of its representatives the senators, it
offered to Bonaparte the crown, and requested him to ascend as
emperor the throne of France.

Napoleon acceded to these wishes, and, as the senate, in a
ceremonious procession, marshalled by Cambaceres, came to St. Cloud
to communicate to Bonaparte the wish of France, and to offer to him
and to Josephine the dignities of an empire, he accepted it without
surprise, and apparently without joy, and allowed himself to be
proclaimed NAPOLEON, THE FIRST EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH.

On this memorable day, after Cambaceres, in the name of the senate
and of France, had addressed the first consul as the actual emperor,
he turned to Josephine, who, with that unparalleled admixture of
grandeur, grace, and tender womanly beauty, which were all so
especially her own, was present at this audience at Napoleon's side.

"Madame," said Cambaceres, "there remains yet to the senate a
pleasant duty to perform: to bring to your imperial majesty the
homage of its respect and the expression of gratitude of the French
people. Yes, madame, the public sentiment acknowledges the good
which you are ever performing; that you are always accessible to the
unfortunate; that you use your influence with the chief magistrate
only to diminish evil, and to procure a hearing to those who seek
it; and that your majesty with this well-doing combines the most
amiable tenderness, rendering thankfulness a pleasant duty. These
noble qualities of your majesty foretell that the name of the
Empress Josephine will be a watchword of trust and hope; and, as the
virtues of Napoleon will ever be to his followers an example to
teach them the difficult art of government, so also, the lively
remembrance of your goodness will teach to their honorable wives
that to strive to dry the tear is the surest means of ruling the
heart. The senate deems itself happy in being the first to
congratulate your imperial majesty, and he who has the honor of
addressing you these sentiments in the name of the senate, dares
trust that you will ever number him among your most faithful
servants."

It was, then, decided! France had accepted her master, and
Cambaceres in his solemn address had already marked out the
situation of France and of her rulers. Bonaparte and Josephine were
now their imperial majesties, the senators were their most faithful
servants. What remained to the people but to call themselves
"faithful subjects?"

The people, however, had made known their wishes only through the
voice of the senate; it was the senators who had converted Bonaparte
into the Emperor Napoleon; but the people were also to make their
will known in a solemn manner; they were, through a universal public
suffrage, to decide whether the imperial dignity should be given
only for life to Napoleon the First, Emperor of the French, or
whether it should be hereditary in his family.

France, wearied with storms and divisions, decided with her five
millions of votes for the hereditary imperial dignity in Bonaparte's
family, and thus the people of France created their fourth dynasty.

Meanwhile Josephine received this new decision of the nation, not
with that disquietude and care which she had formerly experienced.
Bonaparte had given her the deepest and strongest proof of his love
and faithfulness. He had not only withstood the pressure of his
whole family, which had conjured him before his election to the
empire to be divorced from his childless wife, but he had in the
generosity of his love appointed his heirs and successors, and these
were to be the sons of Hortense. The senate had decreed that the
imperial dignity should be transmitted as a heritage to Napoleon's
two brothers Joseph and Louis, and moreover they had given to
Napoleon the right to choose his successors and heirs from the
families of the two brothers.

Napoleon had given to Josephine the strongest proof of affection--he
had declared the son of her daughter Hortense and of his brother
Louis, the little Napoleon Louis, to be his successor and heir, and
the idea of a divorce no longer caused apprehensions before which
Josephine need tremble.

Bonaparte had appointed the sons of his brother and of Josephine's
daughter as his heirs, and the heir of the new imperial throne was
already born. Hortense's youth made it hopeful that she would add to
the new branch of the Napoleonic dynasty new leaves and new boughs.

Josephine could now rejoice in her happiness and her glory; she
could abandon herself to the new splendors of her life with all the
enjoyment of her sensitive and excitable nature. She could now
receive with smiles and with affable condescension the homage of
France, for she was not only empress by a nation's vote, but she was
also empress by the choice of Napoleon her husband.

The brilliancy of this new and glorious horizon was soon overhung by
a sombre cloud. The execution of the Duke d'Enghien threw its dark
shadows from the last days of the consulate upon the truly royalist
heart of Josephine; and now that heart was to receive fresh wounds
through the royalists, to whom she had remained true with all the
memories of youth, and in whose behalf she had so often, so
zealously, and so warmly interceded with her husband.

A new conspiracy against Napoleon's life was discovered, and this
time it was the men of the highest ranks of the old aristocracy who
were implicated in it. George Cadoudal, the unwearied conspirator,
had, while in England, planned with the leaders of the monarchical
party residing in France, or who were away from it, a new
conspiracy, whose object was to destroy Bonaparte and to re-
establish the monarchy.

But Fate was again on the side of the hero of Arcola. His good star
still protected him. The conspiracy was discovered, and all those
concerned in it were arrested. Among them were the Generals Pichegru
and Moreau, the Counts de Polignac, Riviere, Saint Coster, Charles
d'Hozier, and many others of the leading and most distinguished
royalists. They were now under the avenging sword of justice, and
the tribunal had condemned twenty of the accused to death, among
whom were the above named. The emperor alone had the power to save
them and to extend mercy. But he was this time determined to exhibit
a merciless severity, so as to put an end to the royalists, and to
prove to them that he was the ruler of France, and that the people
without a murmur had given him the power to punish, as guilty of
high-treason, those who dared touch their emperor.

Josephine's heart, however, remained true to her memories and her
piety; and, according to her judgment, those who, with so much
heroic loyalty, remained true to the exiled monarchy, were criminals
only as they had imperilled her husband's life, but criminals who,
since their plans were destroyed, deserved pardon, because they had
sinned through devotion to sacred principles.

Josephine, therefore, opposed Bonaparte's anger, and begged for
pardon for the son of the former friend of Queen Marie Antoinette,
the Count Jules de Polignac. Bonaparte, however, remained
inexorable; he repelled Josephine with vehemence, reproaching her
for asking for the life of those who threatened his. But she would
not be deterred; since Bonaparte had turned her away with her
petitions and prayers, she wanted at least to give to the wife of
the Count de Polignac an opportunity to ask pardon for her condemned
husband. Despite Bonaparte's wrath, Josephine led the Countess de
Polignac into a corridor through which the emperor had to pass, when
he went from the council-room into his cabinet, and by this means
the countess was fortunate enough, by her tears and prayers, to save
her husband's life. The Count de Polignac was pardoned; and now that
Bonaparte's heart had once been opened to mercy, he also granted to
Josephine the lives of Count Riviere and of General Lajolais, in
behalf of whom Hortense had appealed to the emperor. More than
twenty of the conspirators were accused and sentenced, some to death
and some to severe punishment, but one-half of the accused were,
thanks to the prayers of Josephine and of her daughter, pardoned; a
few were put to death, and the rest transported. Pichegru committed
suicide in prison; Moreau received permission to emigrate to
America; George Cadoudal perished on the scaffold.

After this last fruitless attempt to re-establish in France the
throne of the Bourbons, the royalists, wearied and terrified, had at
least for a time to withdraw into obscurity and solitude, and the
newly-established empire appeared in still more striking
magnificence. The monarchy by God's grace had been conquered by the
empire by the people's grace, and Napoleon wanted now to show
himself to astonished Europe in all the glory of his new dignity. He
therefore undertook a journey with his wife through the conquered
German provinces; he went to Aix-la-Chapelle, to the city of
coronation of the ancient German emperors, and which now belonged to
imperial France; he went to Mayence, the golden Mayence of the old
Roman days, and which now, after so many streams of bloodshed, had
been transferred to France.

This journey of the emperor and empress was one uninterrupted
triumphal procession; the population of the old German city
applauded, in dishonorable faithlessness, the new foreign ruler; ail
the clergy received their imperial majesties at the door of the
cathedral, where Germany's first emperor, Charlemagne, was buried;
and, to flatter the Empress Josephine, the clergy caused a miracle
to be performed by her hand. There existed in the sacred treasury of
the cathedral a casket of gold, containing the most precious relics,
but which was never opened to the eyes of mortals, and whose lock no
key fitted. Only once a year was this precious, sacred casket of
relics shown to the worshipping crowd, and then locked up in the
holy shrine. But for Josephine this treasury was condescendingly
opened, and to the empress was presented this casket of relics, and
behold, the miracle took place! At the touch of the empress the lid
of the casket sprang up, and in it were seen the most precious
jewels of royalty, amongst which was the seal-ring of Charlemagne.
[Footnote: Constant, "Memoires," vol. iii.] No one was more
surprised at this miracle than the clergy!

The neighboring German princes came to ancient Mayence to do homage
to Josephine, and to win the favor of the sovereign of France toward
their little principalities, and to assure him of their devotedness.
Bonaparte already understood how to receive the humble, flattering
German princes with the mien of a gracious protector, and to look
upon them with the eye of an emperor, to whom not only the nations
but also the princes must bow; and Josephine also excited the
admiration of genuine princes and legitimate princesses, by the
graciousness and grandeur, by the unaffected dignity and ease with
which she knew how to represent the sovereign and the empress.




CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE POPE IN PARIS.


Fate had reserved another triumph for the ruler of France, the
Emperor Napoleon--the triumph that the empire by the people's grace
should be converted and exalted into the empire by God's grace. Pope
Pius VII., full of thankfulness that Napoleon had re-established the
Church in France, and restored to the clergy their rights, had
consented to come to Paris for the sake of giving to the empire,
created by the will of the French people, the benediction of the
Church, and in solemn coronation to place the imperial crown on the
head anointed by the hands of God's vice-gerent.

Bonaparte received this news with the lofty composure of an emperor
who finds it quite natural that the whole world should bow to his
wishes, and Josephine received it with the modesty and joyous
humility of a pious Christian. She desired above all things the
blessing of God and of the Church to rest upon this crown, whose
possession had seemed to her until now a spoliation, a sacrilege,
and about which her conscience so often reproached her. But when
God's vicegerent, when the Holy Father of Christendom should himself
have blessed her husband's crown, and should have made fast on
Josephine's brow the imperial diadem, then all blame was removed,
then the empress could hope that Heaven's blessing would accompany
the new emperor and his wife!

But was it really Napoleon's wish that Josephine should take part in
this grand ceremony of coronation? Did he wish that, like him, she
should receive from the hands of the pope the consecrated crown?

Such was the deep, important question which occupied, at the
approaching arrival of the pope, the young imperial court; a
question, too, which occupied Josephine's mind, and also the whole
family, and more especially the sisters of Bonaparte.

Josephine naturally desired that it should be so, for this solemn
coronation would be a new bond uniting her to her husband, a new
guaranty against the evil which the empress's foreboding spirit
still dreaded. But for the very same reasons her enemies prepared
their weapons to prevent Josephine from obtaining this new
consecration and this new glory, and harsh and bitter conflicts took
place within the inner circles of the imperial family on account of
it, which on both sides were carried on with the deepest animosity
and obstinacy, but finally to a complete triumph for Josephine.

Thiers, in his "History of the Consulate and of the Empire," relates
the last scenes in this family quarrel: