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$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter XVII}
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$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{napoleon
josephine
divorce
emperor
louise
marie
napoleon's
new
time

see
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see
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}
$Date{1906}
$Log{See Farewell To Josephine*0005001.scf
}
Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter XVII

The Divorce - A New Wife - An Heir To The Crown

     To further the universal peace he desired, to prevent plots among his
subordinates who would aspire to his crown in case of his sudden death, and to
assure a succession, Napoleon now decided to take a step long in mind - to
divorce Josephine, by whom he no longer hoped to have heirs.

     In considering Napoleon's divorce of Josephine, it must be remembered
that stability of government was of vital necessity to the permanency of the
Napoleonic institutions.  Napoleon had turned into practical realities most of
the reforms demanded in 1789.  True, he had done it by the exercise of
despotism, but nothing but the courage, the will, the audacity of a despot
could have aroused the nation in 1799.  Napoleon felt that these institutions
had been so short a time in operation that in case of his death they would
easily topple over, and his kingdom go to pieces as Alexander's had.  If he
could leave an heir, this disaster would, he believed, be averted.

     Then, would not a marriage with a foreign princess calm the fears of his
Continental enemies?  Would they not see in such an alliance an effort on the
part of new, liberal France to adjust herself harmoniously to the system of
government which prevailed on the Continent?

     Thus, by a new marriage, he hoped to prevent at his death a series of
fresh revolutions, save the splendid organization he had created, and put
France in greater harmony with her environment.  It is to misunderstand
Napoleon's scheme, to attribute this divorce simply to a gigantic egotism. To
assure his dynasty, was to assure France of liberal institutions.  His
glorification was his country's.  In reality there were the same reasons for
divorcing Josephine that there had been for taking the crown in 1804.

     Josephine had long feared a separation.  The Bonapartes had never cared
for her, and even so far back as the Egyptian campaign had urged Napoleon to
seek a divorce.  Unwisely, she had not sought in her early married life to win
their affection any more than she had to keep Napoleon's; and when the emperor
was crowned, they had done their best to prevent her coronation.  When, for
state reasons, the divorce seemed necessary, Josephine had no supporters where
she might have had many.

     Her grief was more poignant because she had come to love her husband with
a real ardor.  The jealousy from which he had once suffered she now felt, and
Napoleon certainly gave her ample cause for it.  Her anxiety was well known to
all the court, the secretaries Bourrienne and Meneval, and Madame de Remusat
being her special confidants.  Since 1807 it had been intense, for it was in
that year that Fouche, probably at Napoleon's instigation, tried to persuade
the empress to suggest the divorce herself as her sacrifice to the country.

     After Wagram it became evident to her that at last her fate was sealed;
but though she beset Meneval and all the members of her household for
information, it was only a fortnight before the public divorce that she knew
her fate.  It was Josephine's own son and daughter, Eugene and Hortense, who
broke the news to her; and it was on the former that the cruel task fell of
indorsing the divorce in the Senate in the name of himself and his sister.

     Josephine was terribly broken by her disgrace, but she bore it with a
sweetness and dignity which does much to make posterity forget her earlier
frivolity and insincerity.

          "I can never forget [says Pasquier] the evening on which the
     discarded empress did the honors 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 around 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 reenter it.  Only women can rise superior to
     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 so bold a front as did his victim."

     There is no doubt but that Napoleon suffered deeply over the separation.
If his love had lost its illusion, he was genuinely attached to Josephine, and
in a way she was necessary to his happiness.  After the ceremony of
separation, he was to go to Saint Cloud, she to Malmaison. While waiting for
his carriage, he returned to his study in the palace. For a long time he sat
silent and depressed, his head on his hand.  When he was summoned he rose, his
face distorted with pain, and went into the empress's apartment.  Josephine
was alone.

     When she saw the emperor, she threw herself on his neck, sobbing aloud.
He pressed her to his bosom, kissed her again and again, until overpowered
with emotion, she fainted.  Leaving her to her women, he hurried to his
carriage.

[See Farewell To Josephine: The Emperor's farewell to the woman who had been
his wife for thirteen years.]

     Meneval, who saw this sad parting, remained with Josephine until she
became conscious.  When he left, she begged him not to let the emperor forget
her, and to see that he wrote her often.

     "I left her," that naive admirer and apologist of Napoleon goes on,
"grieved at so deep a sorrow and so sincere an affection.  I felt very
miserable all along my route, and I could not help deploring that the rigorous
exactions of politics should violently break the bonds of an affection which
had stood the test of time, to impose another union full of uncertainty."

     Josephine returned to Malmaison to live, but Napoleon took care that she
should have, in addition, another home, giving her Navarre, a chateau near
Evreux, some fifty miles from Paris.  She had an income of some four hundred
thousand dollars a year, and the emperor showed rare thoughtfulness in
providing her with everything she could want.  She was to deny herself
nothing, take care of her health, pay no attention to the gossip she heard,
and never doubt of his love.  Such were the recommendations of the frequent
letters he wrote her.  Sometimes he went to see her, and he told her all the
details of his life.  It is certain that he neglected no opportunity of
comforting her, and that she, on her side, finally accepted her lot with
resignation and kindliness.

     Over two years before the divorce a list of the marriageable princesses
of Europe had been drawn up for Napoleon.  This list included eighteen names
in all, the two most prominent being Marie Louise of Austria, and Anna
Paulowna, sister of Alexander of Russia.  At the Erfurt conference the project
of a marriage with a Russian princess had been discussed, and Alexander had
favored it; but now that an attempt was made to negotiate the affair, there
were numerous delays, and a general lukewarmness which angered Napoleon.
Without waiting for the completion of the Russian negotiations, he decided on
Marie Louise.

     The marriage ceremony was performed in Vienna on March 12, 1810, the
Archduke Charles acting for Napoleon.  The emperor first saw his new wife some
days later on the road between Soissons and Compiegne, where he had gone to
meet her in most unimperial haste, and in contradiction to the pompous and
complicated ceremony which had been arranged for their first interview.  From
the beginning he was frankly delighted with Marie Louise. In fact, the new
empress was a most attractive girl, young, fresh, modest well-bred, and
innocent.  She entirely filled Napoleon's ideal of a wife, and he certainly
was happy with her.

     Marie Louise in marrying Napoleon had felt that she was a kind of
sacrificial offering, for she had naturally a deep horror of the man who had
caused her country so much woe; but her dread was soon dispelled, and she
became very fond of her husband.  Outside of the court the two led an
amusingly simple life, riding together informally early in the morning, in a
gay Bohemian way; sitting together alone in the empress's little salon, she at
her needlework, he with a book.  They even indulged now and then in quiet
little larks of their own, as one day when Marie Louise attempted to make an
omelet in her apartments.  Just as she was completely engrossed in her work,
the emperor came in.  The empress tried to conceal her culinary operations,
but Napoleon detected the odor.

     "What is going on here?  There is a singular smell, as if something was
being fried.  What, you are making an omelet!  Bah!  you don't know how to do
it.  I will show you how it is done."

     And he set to work to instruct her.  They got on very well until it came
to tossing it, an operation Napoleon insisted on performing himself, with the
result that he landed it on the floor.

     On March 20, 1811, the long-desired heir to the French throne was born.
It had been arranged that the birth of the child should be announced to the
people by cannon shot; twenty-one if it were a princess, one hundred and one
if a prince.  The people who thronged the quays and streets about the
Tuileries waited with inexpressible anxiety as the cannon boomed forth; one -
two - three.  As twenty-one died away the city held its breath; then came
twenty-two.  the thundering peals which followed it were drowned in the wild
enthusiasm of the people.  For days afterward, enervated by joy and the
endless fetes given them, the French drank and sang to the King of Rome.

     In all these rejoicings none were so touching as at Navarre, where
Josephine, on hearing the cannon, called together her friends and said, "We,
too, must have a fete.  I shall give you a ball, and the whole city of Evreux
must come and rejoice with us."

     Napoleon was the happiest of men, and he devoted himself to his son with
pride.  Reports of the boy's condition appear frequently in his letters; he
even allowed him to be taken without the empress's knowledge to Josephine, who
had begged to see him.