Chapter XIII: Women

IT would be as easy to omit all mention of Napoleon’s mistresses in a serious history as it would be difficult to omit the king’s mistresses from a history of Louis le Grand or Louis le Bien-Aimé. Napoleon was not the man to allow his policy to be influenced by women. Not one of the many with whom he came into contact could boast that she had deflected him one hairbreadth from the path he had mapped for himself. Not all Josephine’s tears could save the life of the young d’Enghien; not all Walewska’s pleading could re-establish the kingdom of Poland.

“Adultery,” said Napoleon, “is a sofa affair,” and he was speaking for once in all honesty. He was a man blessed with a vast personality, a vast power and a vast income, and it is unusual for a man with these three to go long a-suing. Moreover, if the lady who attracted his attention proved recalcitrant, Napoleon rarely pleaded; he raised his offer, and in the event of a further refusal he turned away without a sigh and forgot all about her. That indicates Napoleon’s attitude towards women.

There were, as a matter of fact, one or two whom he honoured by more lover-like attentions. Josephine cost him many bitter hours of self-reproach; Walewska he sought long and earnestly; he displayed every sign of attachment towards Marie Louise. Yet not merely these three, but every woman who granted him favours received in return immense gifts, and, if she desired it, a husband whose path to promotion was made specially easy. The women who flit into and then out of Napoleon’s life seem to be without number, but the gossip of a thousand memoirs, and the hints of a thousand letters, combined with the painstaking care of a crowd of patient inquirers, have brought them all under notice at some time or other. And yet the most elaborate research can only prove that there was one woman who might perhaps have given much to Bonaparte before his meeting with Josephine, and that was a street-walker of the Palais Royal. This tiny incident is hinted at in a letter written by Bonaparte at the age of eighteen.

After this, we find nothing of the same nature for another nine years. Napoleon was too busy and too desperately poor to trouble about such things. He flirted with Laurette Permon, who later became Madame Junot, Duchess d’Abrantès; with his sister-in-law, Désirée Clary, afterwards Madame Bernadotte, Princess of Ponte Corvo and Queen of Sweden and Norway; and with a few young women of good social position whom he met while serving as a junior officer of artillery at Valence. That is all. He came to Josephine heartwhole and inexperienced, and he lavished upon her during the first feverish months of his married life all the stored-up passion of a man of twenty-six. Josephine baulked and thwarted this passion by her delay in joining him while he was conquering Italy, by her petty flirtations with Charles and others, and by the general light-mindedness of her behaviour; from that time forth Napoleon became passionless towards all women. Some he liked, and some he even admired, as far as it was in his nature to admire anyone, but for none did he ever exhibit the uncontrollable desire which for that brief space he had felt for Josephine. Unfaithfulness to her, which he would once have regarded as treason, he now thought of merely as necessary to a man of mature age.

However, throughout the years 1796 and 1797 one cannot find any proof of genuine inconstancy. It was only in 1798, when Napoleon found himself the unrestrained ruler of Egypt, with the whole East apparently at his feet, that he left the narrow path of strict physical virtue. The native ladies did not appeal to him, and he turned with disgust from their over opulent charms. The same cannot be said of some of his officers, a few of whom actually married Egyptian beauties and later brought them back to France. Menou, who succeeded to the chief command after Napoleon’s departure and Kléber’s assassination, was one of these. Others, again, married and settled down in Egypt after the evacuation. Their descendants were supporters of Mehemet Ali, and even nowadays many rich Egyptian proprietors can trace back their descent to a Frankish ancestor who became a Mohammedan a hundred and twenty years ago.

But although, as has been said, Napoleon found no charms behind the yashmaks, the possibilities were by no means exhausted, as his aides-de-camp hastened to point out to him. A few Frenchwomen, by donning male attire, had evaded the strict regulation that no women should accompany the Army of the Orient. The most attractive of these was Marguerite Pauline, wife of a lieutenant of Chasseurs, by name Fourès. To a Commander-in-Chief all things are possible, and young Fourès was packed off in one of the frigates which had escaped from the disaster of the Nile with orders to carry despatches to the Directory. The night of his departure Madame Fourès (la Bellîlote, as she was called, from her maiden name of Belleisle) was entertained by Napoleon at a gay little dinner party; the proceedings, however, were cut short by the General upsetting iced water over her dress and carrying her off under the pretext of having the damage attended to.

After this la Bellîlote was established in a Cairo palace close to General Headquarters, and the little idyll seemed to be progressing famously when a most indignant intruder in the person of Lieutenant Fourès appeared on the scene. He had been captured by the English on his way to Italy, and had been returned for the express purpose of inconveniencing the Général-en-chef. The English were, however, doomed to disappointment, for Napoleon, exercising his dictatorial powers, had a divorce pronounced between Fourès and his wife, and then sent the wretched man back once more to France. From this time forth la Bellîlote had an almost regal dominion in Cairo. The finest silks in the land were confiscated for her adornment, and she drove about the streets amid cries from the soldiers of “Vive la Générale!” and “Vive Clioupatre!” At times she even appeared on horseback in a general’s uniform and cocked hat. The whole proceeding savours of some of the doings of the early Roman Emperors. Suetonius tells us very similar stories of Nero and Caligula. Little adverse comment was caused among the French; it was a very usual thing during the Revolutionary era for officers to be accompanied by women in this fashion. Some women even served generals as aides-de-camp and orderlies, while the Army of Portugal during 1810-11 was frequently hindered because Masséna, commanding, had his _chère amie_ with him.

Madame Fourès’ experience of the delights of being the left-handed queen of the uncrowned king of an unacknowledged kingdom was not destined to endure long; Napoleon returned to France, and she, following him, by his orders, as soon as possible, fell into the hands of the English just as her husband had done. When at last she reached France Bonaparte refused to see her, for he was now reconciled to Josephine, besides being First Consul and having to be careful of his moral reputation. Napoleon did whatever else he could for her; he gave her large sums of money, bought her houses, and secured a new husband for her, whose agreement he ensured by means of valuable appointments under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Napoleon and la Bellîlote never met again; after 1815 she eloped with another man, built up a substantial fortune in the South American trade, and finally died quite in the odour of sanctity at the venerable age of ninety-one.

On Bonaparte’s return to France Josephine had contrived to win him once more to her, despite the efforts of his family, and his own half-determination to end the business there and then, but matters were never the same between them. Napoleon indulged more and more frequently in petty amours with various women, and Josephine, instead of appreciating her helplessness, as is the more usual way with queens and empresses, caused frequent furious scenes by spying on his actions and upbraiding him when any rumour came to her notice. Napoleon cared no whit; he was, moreover, able, by virtue of his supreme power, frequently to ensure that Josephine knew nothing of his infidelity. In 1800 he was peculiarly successful in this way. Marengo had been fought and won, and the First Consul was enjoying, at Milan, the fruits of his dramatic success. The most eminent contralto of the time, Grassini, sang at concerts hurriedly arranged in his honour. Grassini had endeavoured to force herself on his notice three years before, without success, for Josephine held power over him then. The circumstances were different now, and Napoleon, his Italian temperament inexpressibly charmed by her magnificent voice, honoured her by a summons to his apartments. She obeyed gladly; she came at his request to Paris; and finally Napoleon had the effrontery to command her to sing at the thanksgiving festival in the Invalides for the Marengo campaign, where he appeared accompanied by his wife and by all the notabilities of the Consulate. Later she appeared at the Théâtre de la République, and was given a large allowance, both publicly as a singer and secretly as a friend of Napoleon’s. The arrangement ended abruptly, for Grassini was detected in an intrigue with an Italian musician, and left France for a Continental tour.

It was not till 1807 that she returned, and although Napoleon never renewed the old relationship, he gave her an official title, a large salary and employment under his Bureau of Music.

Grassini spent the rest of her days mainly in Paris, and she enjoyed a vast reputation all her life. Money troubles, due to her passion for gambling, and wild adventures of the heart, engaged most of her attention. It has even been said that after Waterloo she condescended to grant Wellington the same favours as Napoleon had enjoyed thirteen years before. Despite the obvious bias of many of the witnesses, the evidence to this end seems conclusive. If it really was true, then Grassini might claim a distinction as notable as Alava’s, who was the only man who fought both at Trafalgar and at Waterloo.

After Grassini passed out of Napoleon’s life, a long period ensued during which no woman received the Emperor’s favour for any continuous length of time. At intervals various hooded figures slipped through the postern door of the Tuileries, past Roustam the Mameluke, and through a secret passage to the Imperial apartments, but the visits were irregular and were merely the results of passing whims on the part of the Emperor. Not one of the women concerned had need of much pressure to become agreeable to the invitations brought them by Duroc, the faithful Grand Marshal of the Palace. They were actresses mainly, and since most of them appeared at theatres managed or subsidized by the Government, Napoleon, if not their direct employer, had in his gift important acting parts and desirable salaries. Many of them were already the mistresses of dandies of the town, and some of them passed on to act in the same capacity for various crowned heads of Europe, while one was actually requested by a powerful party in Russia to win Alexander the Czar from an objectionable _chère amie_ so that he might return to the Czarina!

Napoleon did all he could to keep these liaisons secret, but he was rarely successful. The women boasted far and wide of their success, and it is likely that many of those who boasted had nothing to boast about. Some even went so far as to publish their memoirs after the Restoration, and to make capital of their own dishonour. Another factor which militated against secrecy was Josephine’s jealousy. Josephine, with the spectre of divorce always before her eyes, was in continual terror lest Napoleon should experience a lasting attachment for one of his stray lights o’ love. Consequently she spied upon him incessantly, battered on his locked doors, wrote frantic appeals to her friends for help and information, and generally acted with less than her usual dignity. Napoleon disregarded her appeals, and stormed back at her whenever she ventured to remonstrate. He was above all law, he declared, and he would allow no human being to judge his actions. Nevertheless, he took care to interfere with the most intimate affairs of all his friends. He tried to bully Berthier, his trusted Chief of Staff, into separating from the lady with whom he had lived for years. At first it seemed as if he was successful, and he consoled his friend by giving him as wife a Princess of the royal House of Bavaria. However, Berthier contrived to obtain his young bride’s agreement to the presence of the other lady, and the three of them ran a perfectly happy _ménage à trois_ for the rest of his life. Napoleon meddled with many other people’s domestic affairs, and it is darkly hinted that Talleyrand’s enmity for the Emperor began when Napoleon first disturbed the tranquillity which existed between the great diplomat and Madame Grand.

The Emperor continued serenely on his way, acting up to his dictum that women were merely incidents in a man’s life. His Court was thronged with greedily ambitious women who threw themselves in his path at every opportunity. At the least hint of a preference on his part, officious courtiers hurried to assist in the negotiations in the hope either of favour or perquisites. The astonishing thing is that the list of the chosen is not many times longer. These intrigues all ran much the same course—a brief partnership, generally without a hint of affection on either side; a minor place in Court for the lady; then a marriage was arranged, an ample dowry provided by the Emperor, and the incident was closed. Not merely did people endeavour to gain their private ends in this manner, but even political parties made use of similar tools. During the Consulate the Bourbons despatched a lady to Paris for the sole purpose of ensnaring Bonaparte, and it is hinted that Metternich endeavoured to place a friend at Court in the same fashion. The great example of this political manœuvre, however, occurs later.

But before Madame Walewska’s name, even, was known to Napoleon, he formed an attachment of some slight historical importance. Eléonore Denuelle was an exceedingly beautiful girl, daughter of parents of a doubtful mode of life, who had been educated at Madame Campan’s famous school along with Caroline Bonaparte and various other great ladies of the Court. Her parents designed a great marriage for her, but they met with poor success, for a certain graceless ex-officer, by name Revel, succeeded in making her believe that he was a good match, and the couple were married early in 1805. Revel believed that Eléonore was an heiress; Eléonore believed that Revel was a rich man; they were both of them woefully disappointed, and separated after two months of married life. Eléonore in despair applied for help to Caroline Murat, and received a minor post in that princess’s household. Napoleon noticed her in January, 1806, and from that time the affair moved rapidly, for in February Eléonore applied for a divorce from Revel (who was now in gaol), and in December a son was born to her whose father, almost without a doubt, was Napoleon.

By the time of his birth, however, Napoleon had formed a new attachment, and Eléonore was never again admitted to his rooms. Napoleon saw that both his son and his ex-mistress were suitably provided for; he settled a thousand pounds a year on Eléonore and married her to a prominent politician (a Monsieur Augier), while he invested large sums of money in trust for her son, Léon. He further mentioned him in his will. Eléonore’s later career was unlucky; her second husband died, a prisoner in Russian hands, and when she married for a third time she was blackmailed for the rest of her life by her first husband and by her scapegrace illegitimate son. Léon ruined all his chances of success in life by his reckless way of living. He gambled away all he possessed, and then lived on what small sums he could beg from his mother and from his Bonaparte relations. He plunged into politics, and even considered for a while standing as a candidate for the position of President of the Second Republic in opposition to Louis Napoleon. He induced the latter to give him a small pension; he made all manner of claims upon the Government, and squandered whatever he obtained in a wild fashion. He issued all sorts of remarkable suggestions, not one of them of the slightest value, on every conceivable subject, and he raised the most frightful clamour when they were disregarded. There is no doubt that he was mentally deranged. He died in 1881 without having accomplished a single noteworthy action.

There is a faint doubt as to Léon’s paternity, due to his mother’s way of living, but the doubts are countered by his striking physical resemblance to the Emperor. Napoleon himself certainly believed him to be his own child; perhaps if he could have foreseen the later career of the child in question he would have been more chary of his acknowledgment. The whole affair seems to be very much wrapped in doubt; Napoleon evinced for young Léon not half the care which he displayed for his other sons, while Léon’s birth (perhaps because it took place while Napoleon was away in Poland) did not rouse nearly as much interest as Walewski’s three years later.

It has already been said that at the time of Léon’s birth Napoleon’s attention was occupied by a new mistress; it was this particular mistress who has been elevated by some writers to the proud position of being “the only woman Napoleon ever loved,” and who certainly held whatever affection the Emperor was able to display for a longer period than any other woman. To begin with, she was of a rank and class far different from any of her predecessors, Josephine not excepted, while secondly she was far fonder of him than was any other woman. The circumstances in which the two met were romantic. Napoleon had just overturned the Prussian monarchy; he had advanced like lightning from the Rhine to the Niemen, and he burst at the head of the Grand Army into Poland, where never before had a French army appeared. The Poles were in ecstasy. They had not the least doubt that their period of slavery was ended, and that the young conqueror would once more unchain the White Eagle. Deputations thronged to meet him, and mobs gave him homage in the villages. At the little town of Bronia, not far from Warsaw, a lady was presented to him at her earnest request, for she had braved all the terrors of the hysterical mob in order to meet him. She proved to be hardly more than a child, and dazzlingly beautiful. Napoleon thanked her for her kindness, and said that he was anxious to see her again. The whole interview barely lasted a minute, for it was imperative that Napoleon should press on to Warsaw, but it made a deep impression on both of them.

Marie Laczinska was the daughter of one of the old noble families of Poland, and she had recently married Anastase Colonna de Walewice-Walewska. Although Marie’s family was noble, it was hardly to be compared with that of her husband, for Anastase was not only the head of a house in whose veins ran the bluest blood of Poland, but he also traced his descent to the Roman family of Colonna, and through them his line ran back into the mists of history beyond the Carolings and the Merovings until one could trace its source among the patrician families of republican Rome. He was rich, he was famous, he held vast power. The only objections to him as a husband were that he was seventy years old and already had grandchildren who were older than Marie. In the minds of Marie’s guardians such objections were trivial, and the young girl was forced into marriage with the old noble, to play the part of Abishag to Walewska’s David. She was not fated to endure this for long, because Napoleon had not forgotten the meeting at Bronia, and sought her at all the fêtes at which he appeared in Warsaw. The secret could not be kept, and soon all Poland was aware that the great Emperor was in love with the Polish lady. The nationalist party heard the news with wild exultation, and Poniatowski, the hope of Poland, called upon her to sacrifice herself for her country. The other great nobles pressed her feverishly, and they contrived to persuade Walewska (who, naturally, was the only man who was ignorant of what was going on) to bring his wife to a ball which Poniatowski was giving in the Emperor’s honour.

Marie came reluctantly. She was dressed as plainly as possible, in white satin without jewels, and, once in the ballroom, she kept herself as far in the background as she could. To no purpose, however. Napoleon, overjoyed, observed her as soon as she appeared, and immediately sent to her and requested her to dance with him. She refused. Duroc and Poniatowski remonstrated with her, but she remained adamant. Many other French officers had already noticed her dazzling beauty, her rich fair hair and the blueness of her eyes, and they swarmed round her. Napoleon watched the proceedings jealously from the other end of the room. As soon as any one of his officers appeared to have made any progress, he called to his Chief of Staff, and that particular officer was sent off post haste to carry a message somewhere out in the bleak countryside a hundred miles away. The situation verged on the impossible. Napoleon in desperation made a tour of the room, speaking to all the hundreds of women present merely in order to exchange half a dozen words with the one who was the cause of all this trouble. When at last he reached Madame Walewska the interview was unsatisfactory. She was as pale as death, and said nothing. He was vastly and unusually embarrassed. “White upon white is a mistake, Madame,” he said, looking at her pale cheeks. Then—“This is not the sort of reception I expected after——” Then he passed on, and left the ballroom soon after.

That same evening she received a wild, urgent note from Napoleon. Others followed in rapid succession. Poniatowski and all the fiery patriots of Poland implored her to yield. Her blind husband, infatuated by this remarkable new popularity, bore her to reception after reception. A mercenary old aunt of hers, tampered with by Poniatowski, flung herself into the business as well, and offered herself as go-between. At last she received a letter from Napoleon hinting that he would restore Poland if she would yield. She yielded. Napoleon did not restore Poland.

For Poland’s sake she had broken her marriage vows and violated all the dictates of her conscience. Napoleon, in return, temporized and compromised. He erected the Grand Duchy of Warsaw out of territory torn from Prussia, but the Grand Duchy was not autonomous, it was not called Poland, it was only one-third the size of the old land of the White Eagle. Poor Marie protested to the best of her ability, to be soothed by fair words from the Emperor. At Napoleon’s request she left Poland after Tilsit, and came to Paris, where she lived in extreme retirement, visited by Napoleon as often as he could manage. Her gentleness and dislike of display must have been grateful to Napoleon after his other experiences, and he passed many happy hours with her. She was by his side during the maelstrom of the Essling campaign, and at Schönbrunn, the Palace of the Cæsars, she told him she was about to bear him a child. She did not realize then that from that selfsame palace Napoleon would summon, in a few months’ time, a young girl who would supplant her in his affections, and who would also bear him a son, who, in place of being a nameless bastard, would bear the title of King of Rome. She went back to her dear Poland for the event, and at Walewice, in May, 1810, Alexander-Florian-Joseph-Colonna-Walewski was born. On her return to Paris Napoleon had married Marie Louise.

Napoleon softened the blow for her as well as he could. He heaped wealth upon her; he gave her town houses and country houses; the Imperial officials were always at her orders, and the Imperial theatres were always open to her. Her son, young Walewski, was made a Count of the Empire. Perhaps this was some consolation to her. Perhaps—seeing that it was her son’s birth which had determined Napoleon to make a new marriage—not. Napoleon even found time during the turmoil of the Campaign of France to make additional arrangements in their favour, but by this time whatever remained of the affair had long since burnt itself out.

After the fall of the Empire, Marie Walewska seems to have considered herself free. She paid a mysterious visit to Napoleon at Elba in 1814, accompanied by her little son, and she was present at the Tuileries on Napoleon’s arrival there during the Hundred Days, but apparently on neither occasion was the old relationship renewed. In 1816 she married a distant cousin of the Bonapartes, a certain d’Ornano, a Colonel of the Guard, but she was not destined long to enjoy her new happiness. Marie de Walewska died in December, 1817.

Poor Marie! Her life was short, but it must have been full of bitterness. Napoleon’s affairs of the heart (if they are even worthy of that name) all seem inexpressibly harsh and matter-of-fact. He seemed to have a kind of Midas touch in these matters, whereby everything honourable and romantic with which he came into contact turned, not into gold, but into lead. Various authors have tried to infuse into his association with Marie de Walewska some gleam of romance, some essence of the self-sacrificing spirit which is noticeable in the parallel deeds of other monarchs, but they have failed. Marie certainly seems at first to have believed him to be a hero, a knight without reproach as well as without fear, but as soon as she was disillusioned she resigned herself to an existence as drab as if she had been once more a septuagenarian’s wife, and not the mistress of an Emperor. Contemporary Parisian society was almost entirely ignorant of her existence. She paid no calls, and she received none. The few appearances she made at Court were such as were only to be expected from a Polish lady of high rank. Napoleon could not keep her love for long, and, though she was faithful to him as long as the Empire endured, she obviously considered herself free as soon as Napoleon was sent to St. Helena. It was not the long-drawn, heroic romance some writers have endeavoured to make it appear; rather was it a brief burst of passion, and then—monotony.

The baby Count of the Empire whom she left behind enjoyed a distinguished career. In appearance he certainly resembled his great father, but his talents never seem to have risen above a mediocre standard. Alexander-Florian-Joseph-Colonna-Walewski was mainly educated in France, but he was a Pole by birth, and he fought for Poland at the age of twenty during the rising of 1830-31. When Poland fell once more before the might of Russia, he returned to France, became a Frenchman, and served in the French army. The revolution of 1848 brought Napoleon III. to the front, and the new Emperor, with his power based on the frail fabric of a legend, saw fit to surround himself with names which recalled to men’s minds the old splendours of the First Empire. Walewski received honours in plenty; he was Ambassador to the most important Courts of Europe, a Senator, and a Minister of State. He wrote learnedly on various subjects. But all his glory was only a pale reflection of his father’s and cousin’s; he suffered eclipse after Sedan, and when he died, aged seventy-two, he had, after all, made very little mark in the world. He had not played the part of a Don John of Austria, or even of a Monmouth. De Morny quite outshone him.

With Napoleon’s marriage to Marie Louise and association with Madame Walewska, his casual amorous adventures came to a more or less abrupt end. It has been suggested that this was on account of increasing age, but Napoleon was only in the early forties, and this cannot be the true reason. However, the explanation is just as simple. Napoleon was devoted to his new wife, and he was frightfully busy. From the summer of 1812, two years after his second marriage, he was almost continuously in the field. His exertions and worries thenceforward were sufficient to occupy even him, without any other complications. One likes to think of him turning with relief from the agonizing strain of ruling Europe to snatch a few quiet minutes in the placid peace surrounding Marie Louise and her child. That is all. He had no other mistress. At Elba he lived with his sister and mother, with no woman to share his inner life. Perhaps this was policy, for Napoleon was trying hard to induce Marie Louise to join him, and he would naturally be chary of doing anything which might annoy her—ignorant as he was of her unfaithfulness. This may be the explanation of the briefness of Madame Walewska’s visit; she may have come intending to join him, and he may have sent her away again, but the fact that she was accompanied by her brother and other relations militates against this theory. Moreover, Marie was already close friends with d’Ornano. After the Hundred Days Napoleon was sent to St. Helena, and once again no woman accompanied him. The manifold rumours about Madame de Montholon and others at St. Helena seem to have no foundation whatever in fact. Thus practically all Napoleon’s illicit loves are confined to the decade 1800-10, while the last decade is entirely clear of them.

Thus far we have only treated of women who were Napoleon’s mistresses; but considerable interest also attaches to a large number of women who, although members of the Imperial circle, never attained this dubious honour. Perhaps of these the one who attained the greatest heights (and who, incidentally, did least to deserve it) was Désirée Clary. She was the sister of the lady whom Joseph Bonaparte made his wife, and whose dowry of six thousand pounds was so welcome to the struggling family. Désirée’s own dowry would have been of the same amount, and Joseph and various other Bonapartes tried to induce Napoleon to marry her. He seems to have dallied with the idea; indeed, it is frequently stated that a contract of betrothal was drawn up, but, however it was, Napoleon broke off the negotiations rather abruptly when he went to Paris in 1795. There is hardly any doubt that he had flirted with Désirée rather excessively, and that, after making a deep impression upon her, he had wounded her deeply by his precipitate abandonment. Subsequently he tried to make amends in much the same manner as he employed with his discarded mistresses—he tried to find her a husband to whom he could give substantial promotion. But Désirée was once more unlucky, for the man Napoleon sent to her, General Duphot, was murdered almost on her threshold while she was staying at Joseph Bonaparte’s Embassy in Rome.

Eventually she was approached by Bernadotte, during Napoleon’s absence in Egypt, and married him. Subsequently she declared that she had done this because Bernadotte was the only man who could injure Bonaparte, but she must have been far-sighted indeed if she could perceive the career which was awaiting Bernadotte. Moreau, and half a dozen other generals, such as Augereau, were more powerful than Bernadotte at the time. Désirée’s statement was probably made in the light of subsequent events.

It was Bernadotte who gained most by the marriage. He acquired at one stroke a venomous, if inert, ally in his wife, an enthusiastic supporter in Joseph, his brother-in-law, and a sure refuge in case of trouble in Napoleon’s dislike of a scandal in his family. From this time on, Désirée received distinction after distinction, and soon she was Son Altesse Serène la Maréchale Princesse de Ponte Corvo, sister of the Queen of Spain, and a leading figure in Imperial society. Then came the greatest distinction of all, and she found herself Princess Royal of Sweden. This last she found rather upsetting, for she discovered she was expected to leave her beloved Paris to live in the bleakness of the Stockholm palaces. She said, tearfully and truthfully, that she had thought at first that her new rank was merely a titular distinction, of the same class as her sovereignty of Ponte Corvo. She refused absolutely to leave France, and so Bernadotte went alone to Stockholm, thence to lead his Swedes against the Empire, while his wife stayed on in Paris. It certainly was an anomalous position, and some authors have said that Désirée acted as a spy on behalf of the Allies during the war of liberation. However, we can be quite sure that Napoleon, whatever tenderness he still felt towards her, would not have tolerated her sending news of any value to her husband; incidentally, it is obvious that a woman to whose mind Ponte Corvo, with its six thousand inhabitants, was in the same class as Sweden, with its millions, could not have been of much use as a spy.

After 1815, fate overtook her, and she was borne away to spend the rest of her life in the spartan splendour of the palace in the Staden. From that time forth she and her husband were a disappointed couple, distrusted and despised by all Europe, he with his eyes turned lingeringly towards the France whose crown he believed he had so nearly attained, she thinking longingly of the gaiety and careless freedom of the Paris she had left behind, which now hated her with true Parisian virulence.

Napoleon’s sisters married before the plenitude of his power, and the matches they made were not as splendid as they might have been later; it was for his younger but much more distant connections that Napoleon was able to find husbands of royal rank. It is curious to notice the extraordinary marriages which were arranged while the Empire was at its height. A niece of Murat’s, who had been brought up as the ragged and bare-footed daughter of a small farmer, married Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and among her grandchildren and great-grandchildren at the present day are the King of Rumania, the King of the Belgians and the Queen of Portugal. Several of the petty princelings of Germany, with thirty generations of royal descent behind them, married obscure little Beauharnais and Taschers de la Pagerie. Eugène de Beauharnais and Berthier married princesses of Bavaria, and Jerome received as bride a daughter of the King of Würtemberg.

Eugène’s marriage had caused a difficult situation, for Augusta of Bavaria was already affianced to the Hereditary Prince of Baden, heir apparent to the reigning Grand Duke. Napoleon had caused the marriage contract to be broken, but he was in no way disconcerted; he straightway found a new bride for the Hereditary Prince. He selected Stéphanie de Beauharnais, a “thirty-second cousin” of Josephine’s. Stéphanie was the merest child, who had had the most extraordinary upbringing. Her parents were of a shiftless character, like various other Beauharnais, and after the Revolution Stéphanie had been dependent on an English peeress, Lady de Bathe, who had arranged with two nuns from the suppressed houses to look after her. As soon as Napoleon heard of her existence, he summoned her to Court, and in accordance with his pronounced ideas on family loyalty, made himself responsible for her support. Next he announced to her that he had secured her a royal husband. Stéphanie immediately became a person of consequence, because as yet royal marriages were by no means common in the Bonaparte family. Their Imperial Highnesses, Napoleon’s sisters, naturally turned like tigresses upon the interloper, and reduced the fifteen-year-old child to tears more than once in the presence of the Court. This was more than Napoleon could stand, and by a single decree he gave the girl precedence over the whole Imperial family save himself and Josephine. He wished to keep the House of Baden as satisfied as possible. With the same idea he gave Stéphanie a marvellous trousseau, a dowry of sixty thousand pounds, and jewels costing the same amount. Her wretched father, who had returned from exile, received an income of three thousand pounds a year and a lump sum of two hundred thousand francs. He had done nothing to earn it; he was merely the father of the girl who was marrying an ally of the Emperor’s.

The period was one of general rejoicing, for Austerlitz had just been won, and French domination over Europe seemed assured. The fêtes of the marriage were of unexampled splendour; there were illuminations; there were fireworks; and there were balls without number, at one of which over two thousand persons appeared. But behind all the rejoicings there was a curious tragi-comedy being played, for poor Stéphanie, married at sixteen to a man she had never met, displayed a disconcerting reluctance to complete all the accompanying formalities. Night after night she insisted on a girl friend sharing her room with her. The Hereditary Prince grew restive; the whole Court knew of the deadlock, and were proportionately amused. But international politics cannot wait on a girl’s whim; war clouds were appearing again across the Rhine; Prussia seemed bent on war, and it was important for Napoleon to be sure of Baden’s friendship. Napoleon admonished Stéphanie with all the severity of which he was capable; he terrified the wretched girl into passivity, and when at last the newly-married couple set off for Carlsruhe Baden’s support of France was assured.

But the unhappiness which awaited all Napoleon’s favourites dogged poor Stéphanie to her grave. The House of Zaehringen hated her as an intruder; her male children all died in infancy, and when in 1818 her husband died she found herself without any established position in a hostile land. Hints have not been lacking that Charles of Baden died through poison administered by the Hochberg family (of morganatic descent from an earlier Elector), which ultimately obtained the throne. But the strangest story is that concerning Kaspar Hauser. In 1828 a young man was found wandering in the streets of Nuremberg, who had never seen the sunlight, and whose whole appearance seemed to indicate that he had been shut up in a cellar all his life. He did not long survive his freedom. Stéphanie jumped to the conclusion that he was her second son, born in 1811, who was supposed to have died as an infant while she was seriously ill. Many people have agreed with her, and have supposed that he had been kidnapped by the Hochbergs to prevent his inheritance of the throne. Some people go further, and boldly declare that after his escape he was poisoned. The whole matter has an aura of peculiarity, and it has attracted the attention of many writers of authority, among them Mr. Baring Gould. The most obvious counter to the theory that Kaspar Hauser was a son of Stéphanie is that the people who would be bold enough to kidnap him would have had the sense to kill him outright, and not to keep him as living evidence of their guilt. If they murdered him in 1828, they would certainly not have flinched from murdering him in 1811.

But Stéphanie always believed that Kaspar was her son, and she passed the last thirty years of her life in mourning a murdered husband, a murdered son, a lost throne, and the utter ruin of her whole life.

This is only one more example of the blight which Napoleon left upon the lives of nearly everyone with whom he came into close contact. All the people who were indebted to him for their entire personal advancement lived to see the day when they paid for a few golden hours with the most utter regret and bitterness. The only ones who “lived happily ever after” were those who had always regarded him with suspicion, like Macdonald, or those of inferior mental calibre, like Marie Louise, whom a strange Providence seemed to take under its own special care.

So much for Napoleon’s relations with women. Nowhere can one find the least trace of romance or self-sacrifice on his part, and it can safely be said that no woman ever loved him devotedly. Never could Napoleon have said of any woman’s beauty, as Richard III. said,

“Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep
To undertake the death of all the world
So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.”

In men he could inspire the utmost self-devotion; it seems hateful to think first of the Cuirassiers, a living torrent of steel, pouring cheering to their deaths at Wagram at his command, and then of his vulgar deceit of Walewska and his petty, mercenary intrigues with other women. It leaves a foul blot on the splendour which surrounds him.

“Methought I saw a slug crawl slavering
Over the delicate petals of a flower.”