The Story of Napoleon

“I pursued the enemy closely with bayonet and cannon for about four leagues, and it was only at ten o’clock at night that, worn out and overwhelmed with fatigue, my men ceased their firing and their pursuit.

“The same success attended us at all other points. His Majesty, who directed everything, amazed me by his coolness and by the precision of his orders. It was the first time I had fought under his eyes, and this opportunity gave me an even higher opinion than I already had of his great talents, as I was able to form my own judgment upon them....”

Napoleon had almost used up his reserves when the Austrian retreat began. No fewer than 24,000 dead and wounded Imperialists were left on the field, a loss of probably 6000 more than that sustained by the French. Not until daybreak on the 7th did the victorious troops lay down their arms. “I soon fell asleep,” says Macdonald, “but not for long, as I was awakened by cries of ‘Long live the Emperor!’ which redoubled when he entered my camp. I asked for my horse, but he had been taken away. I had no other, as the rest were far behind. As I could not walk (the General had been kicked by the animal), I remained on my straw, when I heard someone enquiring for me.... He came by the Emperor’s order to look for me. On my remarking that I had no horse and could not walk, he offered me his, which I accepted. I saw the Emperor surrounded by my troops, whom he was congratulating. He approached me, and embracing me cordially, said:—

“‘Let us be friends henceforward.’

“‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘till death.’ And I have kept my word, not only up to the time of his abdication, but even beyond it. He added: ‘You have behaved valiantly, and have rendered me the greatest services, as, indeed, throughout the entire campaign. On the battle-field of your glory, where I owe you so large a part of yesterday’s success, I make you a Marshal of France’ (he used this expression instead of ‘of the Empire’). You have long deserved it.’

“‘Sire,’ I answered, ‘since you are satisfied with us, let the rewards and recompenses be apportioned and distributed among my army corps, beginning with Generals Lamarque, Broussier, and others, who so ably seconded me.’

“‘Anything you please,’ he replied; ‘I have nothing to refuse you.’”

In this abrupt but characteristic way Macdonald was created a Marshal—a well-merited distinction also conferred on Oudinot and Marmont for their services in this campaign. Napoleon’s opening remark as to friendship referred to the five years of disgrace which the general had suffered by being unjustly implicated in the affairs of Moreau, a disfavour now to fall on Bernadotte, whose corps had behaved ill at Wagram and was dissolved. Thus almost at the same time as he gained a friend the Emperor made an enemy. It is interesting to note that Macdonald’s father was a Scotsman who fought for the Pretender and his mother a Frenchwoman, and that he was born at Sedan.

Napoleon, usually the most active in following up a victory, did not actively pursue the Austrians after the battle of Wagram for the all-sufficient reason that his troops were worn-out with fatigue. If you want to know and see and feel what a battle-field is like, glance through the sombre pages of Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus” until you come to his description of that of Wagram. Here is the passage, and it is one of the most vivid in literature: “The greensward,” says the philosopher, “is torn-up and trampled-down; man’s fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedge-row, and pleasant dwellings, blown-away with gunpowder; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous place of Skulls.” There were two days of hard fighting at Znaym on the 10th and 11th July, in which Masséna and Marmont took part, Napoleon not coming up until the morning of the second day. On the 12th an armistice was arranged.

Brief notice must be taken of the course of the war in other parts of Europe. The formidable Walcheren Expedition, so called because of its disembarkation on the island of that name, was undertaken by Great Britain as a diversion against the French. The idea had been mooted and shelved three years before, to be revived when Austria pressed the British Government to send troops to Northern Germany in the hope of fostering insurrection there. The Duke of Portland’s government, prompted by Lord Castlereagh, thought that Antwerp would be a more desirable objective. Instead of the troops pushing on immediately to that city, Flushing must needs be first besieged and bombarded. This detour lost much precious time, which was used to good advantage by Bernadotte and King Louis in placing the city in a state of defence.

The commanders of the English naval and military forces—Sir Richard Strachan and Lord Chatham respectively—now engaged in unseemly wrangling as to further movements, while meantime many of the soldiers fell victims to malarial fever. Eventually the army sailed for home, after an immense expenditure of blood and treasure, thousands of men dying and the cost amounting to many millions of pounds sterling. The expedition was for long the talk of the British people, the affair being epitomised in a witty couplet which aptly summed up the situation:—

Lord Chatham, with his sword undrawn,Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan;Sir Richard, longing to be at ’em,Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham.

In Spain things were going from bad to worse for Great Britain, and an expedition against Naples, commanded by Sir John Stewart, was eventually obliged to withdraw after some early successes. England felt the heavy hand of Napoleon very severely in the dark days of 1809.

We have noted that Archduke Ferdinand had troops to the number of 35,400 in Poland called the Army of Galicia. He was faced by Prince Galitzin and Prince Poniatovski, who had nearly 60,000 men, including Russians, Poles, and Saxons, under their command. Warsaw was secured by the Austrians after the battle of Raszyn, but following an attack on Thorn the Archduke was compelled to retreat, hostilities in Poland being terminated by the armistice of Znaym.

In Tyrol the peasant war was marked by many exciting events. The inhabitants of this picturesque land of forests and mountains were intensely patriotic and hated the Bavarians, under whose domination they had passed after Austerlitz, with an exceedingly bitter hatred. They felt that now was the time for revenge, for showing that the country was at heart still loyal to the Emperor Francis, descendant of a long line of monarchs who had exercised their feudal rights for over four centuries. A section of Archduke John’s army, amounting to some 10,000 men under General Chasteler, was accordingly sent to aid the ardent nationalists, who appointed their own leaders, the most celebrated of whom was Andreas Hofer, an innkeeper and cattle-dealer of considerable substance. A signal was agreed upon; when sawdust was seen floating on the waters of the Inn the people of the villages through which the river flowed were to understand that a general rising was expected of them. There was no fear that the news would not reach outlying districts. The people did not fail their leaders, and Innsbruck, the capital of the province, then in the hands of the Bavarians, was attacked, and did not long resist the gallantry of the Tyrolese. Other garrisons met a similar fate, and in less than a week but one fortress still held out in Northern Tyrol, so well had the rugged fellows performed their self-appointed task. Unhappily for the intrepid patriots—Napoleon with his usual partiality for misrepresentation called their leaders “brigands”—disasters succeeded their early victories, and Innsbruck was held for but six weeks before Lefebvre put himself in possession. Again fortune smiled on the Tyrolese. Wrede, who commanded the Bavarians, unduly weakened his forces by sending various regiments to join Napoleon. Taking advantage of their knowledge of this fact, 20,000 peasants presented themselves before the capital and regained it. Two more battles were waged outside the walls of Innsbruck, and innumerable skirmishes took place with the large army which the Emperor now poured into Tyrol before the flames were finally extinguished in December 1809. It is safe to say that the ashes would have continued to smoulder much longer had not Hofer been the victim of treachery. He was betrayed to the enemy by an ungrateful priest, and, after trial, executed on the 21st February 1810. Many of his colleagues availed themselves of an amnesty granted by Prince Eugène, but both Hofer and Peter Mayer preferred to fight to the end. The Emperor of Austria, grateful for the services rendered to him by the former innkeeper, provided the hero’s widow with a handsome pension and ennobled his son.

On the 15th October 1809 peace was restored between France and Austria by the Treaty of Schönbrünn, sometimes called the Peace of Vienna, by which the former chiefly benefited. More than once the negotiations trembled in the balance, but ultimately the Austrian war party was obliged to give way. Archduke Charles had grown tired of fighting, the wily Metternich could see nothing but disaster by its continuance. Just as business people sometimes ask a higher price than they expect to receive for an article of commerce and are content to be “beaten down,” so Napoleon made extravagant demands at first and was satisfied with smaller concessions. The apparent readiness to give way, for which he did not forget to claim credit, enabled him to pose as a political philanthropist. Nevertheless, three and a half million people were lost to Austria by the districts which she ceded to France, Bavaria, Russia, Saxony, Italy, and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Pursuing the same policy of army retrenchment he had followed with Prussia, Napoleon insisted that Austria should support not more than 150,000 troops. A big war indemnity was also exacted.

The Emperor afterwards maintained that this “pound of flesh” was insufficient. “I committed a great fault after the battle of Wagram,” he remarked, “in not reducing the power of Austria still more. She remained too strong for our safety, and to her we must attribute our ruin. The day after the battle, I should have made known, by proclamation, that I would treat with Austria only on condition of the preliminary separation of the three crowns of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia.” As a matter of fact the abdication of the Emperor Francis had been one of his extortionate demands in the early stages of the negotiations.

If proof were necessary of the truth of the proverb that “truth is stranger than fiction” the marriage of Napoleon to the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, but a few months after he had threatened to dispossess her father of his throne, would surely justify it. Poor childless, light-hearted Josephine was put away for this daughter of the Cæsars. The Emperor had first asked for a Russian Princess, then as suddenly turned in the direction of the House of Hapsburg because his former suit was not immediately accepted. From that time Napoleon’s friendship with Alexander began to wane perceptibly. The Czar was under no delusion when he prophetically remarked, on hearing of the Emperor’s change of front in wooing an Austrian princess, “Then the next thing will be to drive us back into our forests.”

Small wonder that in after years Napoleon referred to his second marriage as “That abyss covered with flowers which was my ruin.”

To compare Napoleon’s two consorts is extremely difficult, because their temperaments were essentially different. Josephine was vivacious, witty, fond of dress and of admiration, and brought up in a very different school of thought to that of Marie Louise. The former had witnessed, and to some extent felt, the terrors of the Revolution at their worst; she had mixed with all sorts and conditions of men and women, some good, many bad; the latter had been nurtured with scrupulous care, so shielded and safeguarded that she scarcely knew of the follies and sins which mar the everyday world. She once wrote to a friend that she believed Napoleon “is none other than Anti-Christ.” When she heard that the man she felt to be “our oppressor” was to become her husband, she lifted her pale blue eyes to the skies and remarked that the birds were happier because they could choose their own mates! And yet, although she was so horrified, she had a certain nobility of character which enabled her to understand that in making the surrender she would be performing a double duty to her father and to her country: “This marriage gives pleasure to my father, and though separation from my family always will make me miserable, I will have the consolation of having obeyed his wishes. And Providence, it is my firm belief, directs the lot of us princesses in a special manner; and in obeying my father I feel I am obeying Providence.”

But what were the reasons for Napoleon’s dissolution of his first marriage when his love for Josephine is beyond question? Pasquier thus sums up the matter for us:

“For some time past,” he says, “the greater number of those about him, and especially the members of his family, had been urging him to repudiate a union which could not give him an heir, and which precluded the idea of his dreaming of certain most advantageous alliances. As early as the time of his consecration as Emperor, the greatest pressure had been put upon him to prevent him from strengthening the bonds uniting him to Josephine, by having her crowned by his side; but all these endeavours had been neutralized by the natural and potent ascendancy of a woman full of charm and grace, who had given herself to him at a time when nothing gave any indication of his high destinies, whose conciliatory spirit had often removed from his path difficulties of a somewhat serious nature, and brought back to him many embittered or hostile minds, who seemed to have been constantly a kind of good genius, entrusted with the care of watching over his destiny and of dispelling the clouds which came to darken its horizon....

“I can never forget the evening,” adds Pasquier, “on which the discarded Empress did the honours of her Court for the last time. It was the day before the official dissolution. A great throng was present, and supper was served, according to custom, in the gallery of Diana, on a number of little tables. Josephine sat at the centre one, and the men went round her, waiting for that particularly graceful nod which she was in the habit of bestowing on those with whom she was acquainted. I stood at a short distance from her for a few minutes, and I could not help being struck with the perfection of her attitude in the presence of all these people who still did her homage, while knowing full well that it was for the last time; that, in an hour, she would descend from the throne, and leave the palace never to re-enter it. Only women can rise superior to the difficulties of such a situation, but I have my doubts as to whether a second one could have been found to do it with such perfect grace and composure. Napoleon did not show as bold a front as did his victim.”

The Archduchess was in her eighteenth year, Napoleon in his forty-first. She was not without personal charms, although Pasquier, who keenly sympathised with Josephine, scarcely does her justice. “Her face,” he says, “was her weakest point; but her figure was fine, although somewhat stiff. Her personality was attractive, and she had very pretty feet and hands.” The marriage was celebrated by proxy at Vienna on the 11th March 1810.

That Marie Louise grew to love the man of whom she once wrote that “the very sight of this creature would be the worst of all my sufferings” is very improbable, and in the end she played him false. She certainly showed no wish to join him at Elba, and shortly after his death married the dissolute Adam Albert, Graf von Neipperg, her third husband being the Comte de Bombelles. The Emperor believed in her faithfulness to the last. “I desire,” he said to his physician, Antommarchi, “that you preserve my heart in spirits of wine, and that you carry it to Parma to my dear Marie Louise. Please tell her that I loved her tenderly, and that I have not ceased to love her.”

CHAPTER XXVII

A Broken Friendship and what it Brought

(1810–1812)

Napoleon now entered with renewed zest upon the work of perfecting his Continental System, and in so doing he quarrelled with his brother Louis, King of Holland. The young monarch had followed a liberal policy, devoting his time and energy to the interests of his people, and earning their respect if not their love. Napoleon always regarded the land of dykes and wind-mills as scarcely more than a province of France; Louis was determined that his country should be independent. He was no believer in the Emperor’s plan to keep out British goods, so profitable a source of revenue, and as a consequence an extensive business was carried on between Holland and England. Napoleon threatened, Louis temporised, until the former, holding the trump card, finally settled to annex the Kingdom which so openly defied his wishes and commands. Louis was aware that this would probably be the end of the quarrel, for on the 21st September 1809, Napoleon had written a letter to him setting forth his many grievances. He charged the King with favouring Dutchmen who were well disposed towards England, with making speeches containing “nothing but disagreeable allusions to France,” with allowing “the relations between Holland and England to be renewed,” with violating “the laws of the blockade which is the only means of efficaciously injuring this Power,” and so on.

“To sum up,” he concluded, “the annexation of Holland to France is what would be most useful to France, to Holland, and to the Continent, because it is what would be most harmful to England. This annexation could be carried out by consent or by force. I have sufficient grievance against Holland to declare war; at the same time I am quite ready to agree to an arrangement which would yield to me the Rhine as a frontier, and by which Holland would emerge to fulfil the conditions stipulated above.”

The Emperor began by annexing the island of Walcheren. Gradually the encroachments were extended until the left bank of the Rhine was wholly French. Troops were drafted to Holland, the Dutch bitterly resenting the interference of Napoleon in affairs which they held were no concern of his. There was talk of an insurrection, of arming the country to resist the arbitrary claims of the despot. Finally the unhappy Louis abdicated in favour of his son, and retired to the confines of Bohemia. Little more than a week later Holland was definitely annexed to the Empire, thereby adding nine departments to France. In the following month Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, was offended by the appearance of French troops at the mouths of the Elbe and Weser. Indeed, it would appear as if Napoleon was intent upon alienating the affection of the members of his own Imperial family. Perhaps the most tried brother was Joseph, who deserved all pity in the far from enthusiastic reception his new Spanish subjects were according him. Lucien had long since quarrelled with the Emperor, and although the latter attempted a reconciliation he was unsuccessful. On obtaining Napoleon’s permission to retire to America, the ship on which he sailed was captured by an English frigate, and for several years he lived the life of a country gentleman in the land he had been brought up to hate. The hapless Josephine was in retirement at Malmaison; Murat failed to see eye to eye with his brother-in-law, so much so that later the Emperor threatened to deprive him of his throne. In 1810 Napoleon also lost the services and support of Bernadotte by his election as Crown Prince of Sweden.

But while his brothers and friends were thus falling away from him Napoleon felt amply compensated in March 1811 by the birth of a son, who was given the high-sounding title of King of Rome. It will be remembered that Charlemagne, founder of the Holy Roman Empire, was styled “King of the Romans.” “Glory had never caused him to shed a single tear,” says Constant, the Emperor’s valet, “but the happiness of being a father had softened that soul which the most brilliant victories and the most sincere tokens of public admiration scarcely seemed to touch.”

Supreme in war, Napoleon was also one of the greatest administrators of whom we have record. As the story of his life has progressed we have noted how he set about the reformation of the governments of the various countries he had conquered or where his word was regarded as law. “The State—it is I,” said Louis XIV., and Napoleon summed up his own mode of life on one occasion by quoting the remark, which was no mere figure of speech. He seldom took recreation; when he was tired of thinking of battalions he thought of fleets, or colonies, or commerce. As Emperor he sometimes hunted, but more from a matter of policy than because he loved sport, just as he went to Mass to set a good example, and to the first act of a new play to gratify public curiosity. M. Frédéric Masson, the eminent Napoleonic historian, is authority for the statement that the Emperor once promised to attend a magnificent ball, and the most elaborate preparations had been made in his honour. Unfortunately the Imperial guest remained closeted with the Minister of Finance from eight o’clock in the evening until he heard a clock strike and was surprised to find that it was 3 A.M. The so-called pleasures of the table were miseries to him, and he ate his food with no regard whatever for convention or the menu. He would begin with an ice and finish with a viand.

The “Memoirs” of Napoleon’s three private secretaries, Bourrienne, Méneval, and Fain, afford us intimate views of the great man at work. Those of Bourrienne are the least authentic because they are not entirely his writing. The Emperor had an unfortunate habit from his secretary’s point of view of dictating his correspondence in full, and he spoke at such a rate that it was almost impossible to note what he said in its entirety. To interrupt him was a breach of etiquette. Fain found it necessary to leave blanks, which he filled up when he was transcribing with the help of the context.

M. Masson thus describes the Emperor’s work-room at the Tuileries:—

“The room which Napoleon made into his study was of moderate size. It was lighted by a single window made in a corner and looking into the garden. The principal piece of furniture, placed in the middle, was a magnificent bureau, loaded with gilt bronze, and supported by two griffins. The lid of the table slided into a groove, so that it could be shut without disarranging the papers. Under the bureau, and screwed to the floor, was a sliding cupboard, into which every time the Emperor went out was placed a portfolio of which he alone had the key. The armchair belonging to the bureau was of antique shape; the back was covered with tapestry of green kerseymere, the folds of which were fastened by silk cords, and the arms finished off with griffins’ heads. The Emperor scarcely ever sat down in his chair except to give his signature. He kept habitually at the right of the fireplace, on a small sofa covered with green taffeta, near to which was a stand which received the correspondence of the day. A screen of several leaves kept off the heat of the fire. At the further end of the room, at right angles in the corners, were placed four bookcases, and between the two which occupied the wall at the end was a great regulator clock of the same kind as that furnished in 1808 by Bailly for the study at Compiègne, which cost 4000 francs.... There were books also in the back study, books in the cabinet of the keeper of the portfolio, along the side of the bedroom, and books also in the little apartment.

“Opposite the fireplace, a long closet with glass doors, breast high, with a marble top, contained boxes for papers, and carried the volumes to be consulted and the documents in use; no doubt also the equestrian statuette of Frederick II., which the Emperor constantly had under his eyes. This statuette was the only work of art which he ever personally desired to have.

“In the recess of the window was the table of the private secretary. The room was furnished with a few chairs. At night, to light his bureau, Napoleon used a candlestick with two branches, with a great shade of sheet iron of the ordinary kind.”

There was also a back study, where the Emperor usually received his Ministers of State, a topographic study, and two small rooms. From this suite of apartments Napoleon may be said to have directed Western Europe.