Chapter X: 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.