Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0006/00061.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 24KB | 370 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00061}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter V}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{napoleon
josephine
hortense
emperor
time
louis
succession
bonaparte
crown
josephine's}
$Date{1906}
$Log{}
Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Josephine
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter V

The Question Of Succession - Marriage Of Hortense - Josephine Empress Of The
French People - The Coronation

     The first real threat to Josephine's position came in a political
question.  In order to give an appearance of stability to the new government,
it was proposed to give the First Consul the right to appoint a successor.
But if Napoleon had this right, would he not wish for a son upon whom to
confer it, would he not desire to establish a hereditary office?  Josephine
had given him no children.  He was only thirty-one; might he not, in spite of
all his affection, divorce her for the sake of this succession, which, he
declared, was essential to the future of the Consulate.  Josephine turned all
her power of cajoling upon Napoleon.  "Do not make yourself king," she begged;
and when he laughed at her, and told her that securing to himself the right to
appoint a successor in the Consulate was nothing of that sort - only a device
to prevent the overthrow of the government in case of his absence at the head
of the army, or in case of his sudden death, she was not convinced.  She
began, indeed, to talk of the advisability of bringing back the Bourbons, and
called herself a royalist.

     Napoleon's decision was taken, however.  He must appoint a successor, and
it should be one of his own family.  But which one?  Joseph had no head for
affairs.  With Lucien he had quarreled.  But there was Louis, who had none of
his brothers' faults and all of their good qualities.  Louis it should be.
The knowledge that Napoleon undoubtedly favored Louis as his successor
determined Josephine to arrange a marriage between him and her daughter
Hortense.

     At this time, 1800, Hortense was seventeen years old, though the
exceptional experiences of her childhood had given her a thoughtfulness quite
superior to her years.  She had been but ten when her mother, lest a suspicion
of her patriotism might be roused because she brought up her children in
idleness, had apprenticed her to a dressmaker.  She was but eleven years old
when her parents were imprisoned, and when in the costumes of laborers'
children she and Eugene had made frequent visits to les Carmes and had gone
together more than once to beg of persons in authority for the lives of their
father and mother.  After the Revolution, Hortense had been placed in Mme.
Campan's school at St. Germain - a school established to give the young girls
of the better class whose parents had been scattered or guillotined in the
Revolution, an opportunity to learn the ways and the graces of that society
which for so long the patriots had been trying to uproot.  At Mme. Campan's,
Hortense had distinguished herself by her gentleness and her goodness, by the
quickness with which she learned everything taught, and by her enthusiasm and
ideals.  She had left the school a thoroughly charming and accomplished girl,
to join her mother, now the wife of the First Consul.  She had all of
Josephine's charms of person, her grace and suppleness, her beautiful form,
her interesting and mobile face; but she was more vivacious than Josephine and
more intelligent.  As for her accomplishments, they were many.  She played the
piano and the harp, and sang well.  Her drawing and embroidery were not bad,
as many specimens still preserved show.  She danced with exquisite grace; she,
even at this time, had literary aspirations, and she was the star of the
company which put on so many pieces at the little theatre at Malmaison.

     Hortense was a favorite of Napoleon.  He had loved her first because she
was Josephine's daughter.  After she left school and was constantly of the
household, he grew more and more attached to her, more and more anxious for
her happiness.  Hortense, though she never ceased to fear Napoleon, loved him
with the enthusiasm of a young girl for a conquering hero.  She seems never to
have questioned his will - never to have doubted his affection for her.

     Hortense's marriage was, of course, an important question with the
Bonapartes, and various suitors had been considered.  The girl herself was not
ambitious.  Neither wealth nor station obscured her judgment.  She wanted to
marry for love, she declared.  At one time she had a strong feeling for Duroc,
and Napoleon favored the marriage strongly.  Duroc was of good family and a
brave soldier, and Hortense loved him; what better? Josephine opposed it.  She
had set her heart on Louise Bonaparte, in spite of the fact that Hortense felt
something like an antipathy to the young man.  Louis himself did not take to
the marriage at first.  He had imbibed from his mother and brothers the idea
that the Beauharnais were the natural enemies of the Bonapartes, and a
marriage with Hortense they all declared, would be disloyal.  However, in
September, 1801, when Louis returned to Paris after several months absence and
saw Hortense at a ball, he was so impressed by her charm that he yielded at
once to Josephine's wishes, and asked for her hand.  Napoleon consented with a
little regret; Hortense obeyed as a matter of duty, urged to it as she was
both by her mother and Mme. Campan.  The marriage took place early in January,
1802. It was a victory for Josephine over the Bonapartes, so her friends said,
and so the Bonapartes felt bitterly.  But, alas, it was a victory for which
Hortense paid the price.  Before the end of the year, it was evident that Mme.
Louis Bonaparte was very unhappy; her husband was jealous and exacting, and
constantly tried to turn her against her mother in the family feud.  Not even
the birth of a son, in October, silenced his grievances for long, though to
Napoleon and to Josephine the coming of the little Napoleon-Charles, as he was
named, was an inexpressible joy.  To Josephine the child was a new support to
her position, a new reason why a succession could be established without
divorcing her and re-marrying.  It was a succession through her, too, since
this was her daughter's child.

     Napoleon himself soon became more devoted to the child than its father
ever was.  In a way, his own ardent desire for fatherhood was satisfied by the
presence of the baby, which he kept by him as much as he could, riding it on
his back, trotting it on his foot, rolling with it on the floor, lying beside
it at night until it slept - a touching proof of this extraordinary man's
passion to possess a love which was faithful and disinterested.  As time went
on and the question of the succession came into the senate, the struggle
between the brothers as to how the heredity should be regulated reached its
climax.  Napoleon determined to adopt Hortense's child and make him his heir.
Joseph, Lucien, and Louis himself refused to resign what they called their
rights, and each had important supporters in his position.  Lucien, in the
struggle, broke entirely with Napoleon.

     But if the succession was to be settled to Josephine's satisfaction,
there were other matters which worried her at the beginning of the life
Consulate.  Chief among these was that Napoleon insisted upon leaving
Malmaison for St. Cloud.  Josephine's interest in the former place was so
great, her life there had been so happy, that she was violently opposed to any
change.  St. Cloud was too large; it smacked too much of royalty, the idea of
which was awaking such vague alarms in her mind; its associations were too
sad.  But her opposition availed nothing whatever.  Bonaparte felt that a
larger residence was necessary.  Malmaison was a private home, St. Cloud
belonged to the State, and he, as the head of the State, wished to occupy its
palaces.  They had no sooner taken St. Cloud than their whole mode of life
changed; the simple, informal ways of Malmaison were laid aside, and a rigid
etiquette adopted.  There is a governor of the palace, there are prefects of
the palace, there are ladies of the palace. Josephine and Napoleon no longer
receive everybody of the household at their table, but eat alone, inviting,
two or three times a week, those persons whom they may care particularly to
distinguish.  The ladies and gentlemen belonging to the palace have tables of
their own quite apart. There is a military household annexed to St. Cloud,
with four generals and a large guard, an elaborate suite which accompanies the
First Consul when he goes forth.  Every Sunday, a great crowd of dignitaries -
senators, cardinals, bishops, ambassadors, everybody of note in Paris - flock
to the First Consul's receptions.  After paying their respects to him, they
pass into the apartment of Madame Bonaparte.  It is the former apartment of
Marie Antoinette, and that Queen herself did not receive in more state than
the wife of the First Consul.  It is the same at the services in the chapel,
which are held every Sunday, and which Bonaparte insists everybody shall
attend.  At the theatre of the palace, where the little plays which they so
much enjoyed at Malmaison are still repeated, there is the same increase of
etiquette.  Josephine and Bonaparte no longer are seated with their friends,
but occupy a loge apart; and when they enter, the whole assembly rises and
salutes.  People are there by invitation, too, and no one pretends to applaud
unless the signal is given by the First Consul.

     Day by day Josephine bemoaned this new departure; and as hostile
criticisms and sneers reached her, she set her face against the changes. Her
protests were useless: "Josephine, you are tiresome - you know nothing about
these things," Napoleon finally told her, and Fouche, her friend, finally
silenced her by his cynical advice.  "Be quiet, Madame; you annoy your husband
uselessly.  He will be Consul for life, King or Emperor, all that he can be.
Your fears disturb him; your advice would wound him. Keep your proper place,
and let the events which neither you nor I know how to prevent work out."

     She did accept, and took her part.  If it was true that Napoleon was
going to make himself Emperor, she must, before all, so conduct herself that
he would prefer her on the throne at his side to all the world.  As the weeks
went on and it became evident that an Empire would soon be proclaimed,
Josephine had increasing need of discretion.  The Bonaparte family had set
themselves again to prevent the succession going to a Beauharnais.  Josephine
should be divorced, they said; Eugene, to whom Napoleon was greatly attached,
should be sent off with his mother.  As for his adopting little
Napoleon-Charles, the child of Hortense, neither Joseph nor Louis, the father,
would hear to it.  "Why should I give up to my son a part of your succession?"
said Louis to his brother.  "What have I done that I should be disinherited?
What will be my place when this child has become yours and finds himself in a
position far superior to mine, independent of me, outranking me, looking upon
me with suspicion and perhaps with contempt?  No, I will never consent to it,
and rather than consent to bow my head before my son I will leave France; I
will take Napoleon away with me, and we will see if you will dare to steal a
child from his father."

     Napoleon's sisters, particularly Caroline, Mme. Murat, were no less
determined than the brothers to secure all the advantages possible from his
glory.  In their eagerness, they showed such envy and bitterness that Napoleon
was deeply disgusted, and gave them no satisfaction as to his intentions.  He
even took some pains to tease them.  One day when the family were together and
he was playing with little Napoleon, he said, "Do you know, little one, that
you are in danger of being King one of these days?"

     "And Achille?" Murat exclaimed, referring to his own son.

     "Oh, Achille will make a good soldier," answered Napoleon laughing, and
when he saw the black looks of both Caroline and Murat, he added: "At all
events, my poor little one, I advise you, if you want to live, to accept no
meals that your cousins offer you."

     In spite of all the plotting and protesting of the Bonapartes, Josephine
was proclaimed Empress, and the law of succession was passed as it pleased
Napoleon: - "The French people desire the inheritance of the Imperial dignity
in the direct natural or adoptive line of descent from Napoleon Bonaparte and
in the direct natural, legitimate line of descent from Joseph Bonaparte and
from Louis Bonaparte." Napoleon was free to adopt either Eugene or
Napoleon-Charles and make him his heir.  The law mentioned neither Joseph nor
Louis as heir.  Josephine's victory in this instance was as much due to the
fact that she had made no protests about the succession and had asked nothing,
as to anything else.  Her seeming confidence (as a matter of fact, she feared
the worst for herself) and her generous pleasure in the satisfaction those
about took in their new honors offered such a contrast to the jealousy and
fault-finding of the Bonapartes that Napoleon felt more and more, as he had
often said to her in family quarrels: "You are my only comfort, Josephine."
Not only Josephine, but Hortense and Eugene showed themselves in all this
period wise and generous.  The two latter apparently felt sincerely that
Napoleon did more for them than they had a right to expect.  The gratitude and
disinterestedness they showed was indeed one of the few real satisfactions of
Napoleon's life, for he seems to have believed always that they were genuine,
something he never felt about the expressions of his own family.

     Not only was the law of succession fixed to Josephine's satisfaction; but
to her unspeakable joy, Napoleon finally told her that she was to be crowned
at the same time as he.  In the new government she had no political rights,
but in this supreme ceremony she should share.  Here again it may have been as
much family opposition as love for Josephine and desire to associate her with
himself in this greatest of royal spectacles that finally led Napoleon to this
decision.  Just as before the proclamation of the Empire the Bonapartes
quarreled about the succession, now they tormented the Emperor about their
positions and their privileges. "One would think," he said testily one day to
Caroline, when she was upbraiding him for not according to his sisters the
honors due them, "that I had robbed you of the inheritance of the late King,
our father." Joseph did not hesitate to say sarcastic things, even in official
gatherings, about the impropriety of crowning a woman who had given her
husband no successor.  Napoleon stood it for some time, and finally in a
violent outburst of passion silenced him at least for the time.  The
announcement that Josephine was to be crowned, and that her sisters-in-law
were to carry the train of her robe, caused still further heart-burnings, but
the fiat had gone forth and everybody finally submitted.

     However, the new court was too busy in the summer and fall of 1804 to
give overmuch time to quarreling.  The mere matter of familiarizing themselves
with the new code of etiquette sufficiently well not to incur the ridicule of
those who had been brought up to court usages, was serious enough to absorb
most of their time and energies.  They succeeded fairly well, though the
aristocrats of the Faubourg St. Germain told endless tales of the blunders
they made, stories which were circulated industriously in the courts of
Europe.  Their failure was not for lack of effort, however.  Josephine and her
ladies took up the code with energy - it was a new amusement, and for weeks
they studied their parts and went through their rehearsals as if they were
preparing a play for the stage. Before the time of the coronation they had
become fairly at home with court usages and were ready to take up the
rehearsals for that ceremony with fresh energy.

     Indeed, for a month at least, all Paris was absorbed in preparations for
the coronation.  Fontainebleau was to be put in order to receive the Pope.
Notre Dame, where the ceremony was to take place, was to be superbly
decorated.  Magnificent carriages and trappings for horses and livery were to
be provided.  Robes and uniforms were to be made ready for the actors.  All of
the decorators, jewelers, costume-makers, merchants of all sorts in the city
were busy night and day.  As for the court itself, there one heard nothing
talked but the coming spectacle.  Under the direction of the Grand Master, the
ceremonies had been planned down to the most trivial detail, and everybody was
busy learning and practicing his part.

     By the time the Pope arrived at Fontainebleau, on November 25, everything
was practically ready.  The court had gone to Fontainebleau to meet His
Holiness, and in the few days it remained there before going to Paris,
Josephine achieved a victory which completed her happiness for the time.  No
religious marriage between her and Napoleon had ever been celebrated, and
although it had been a part of Napoleon's policy since he came into power to
restore the church, and although he had insisted on an observation of all its
ceremonies, he had always refused Josephine's request for a religious
marriage.  Now, however, she obtained a powerful advocate - the Pope - to
whom, at confession, she told her trouble.  He declared he could not officiate
at the coronation unless a religious marriage was performed.  The night before
the coronation, Napoleon gave his consent, and the service was held at the
Tuileries in profound secresy, only two witnesses being present.

     December 2nd had been set for the coronation.  The Tuileries, from which
the royal party was to go to Notre Dame, was astir very early, for the Pope
was to leave the palace at nine; the Emperor and Empress an hour later.  The
morning was given to dressing - a long task in Josephine's case, but one which
justified the labor and thought which had been given to her costume.  Never
had she looked more beautiful than when she joined the Emperor and her ladies.
Napoleon was delighted at her appearance, and Mme. de Remusat declared that
she did not look over twenty-five.

     Josephine's coronation gown was of white satin, elaborately embroidered
in silver and gold; it hung from the shoulders, and was confined by a girdle
set with gems.  A train of white velvet embroidered in gold and silver was
fastened to this gown.  The neck was low and square, and the sleeves were
long.  A ruff, stiff with gold, was set into the top of the sleeves, and rose
high behind her head.  The narrow corsage and the top of the sleeves were
decorated with diamonds.  She wore a magnificent necklace of sculptured stones
surrounded with diamonds, and on her head was a diadem of pearls and diamonds.
Her shoes were of white velvet, embroidered in gold; on her hands she wore
white gloves, embroidered in gold.  The cost of the pieces of this costume are
interesting - the gown is estimated to have cost $2,000; the velvet train,
$1,400; the shoes, $130.

     The pontifical procession had been gone from the Palace over an hour when
Napoleon and Josephine, accompanied by Joseph and Louis Bonaparte, descended,
and entered the gorgeous state carriage drawn by eight horses in rich harness.
As the sides of the vehicle were entirely of glass, the spectators could look
easily upon the magnificence of the party inside. From the Tuileries, the
party proceeded slowly to the Archbishop's palace, along streets crowded with
people and decorated with every device which skill and money could provide.
During the entire procession, salvos of artillery at intervals greeted the
Emperor.  At the palace of the Archbishop, the party entered, and here
Napoleon put on his coronation robe and Josephine finished her costume by
changing her diadem for one of amethysts and by fastening to her left shoulder
a royal mantle of red velvet, embroidered in golden bees and in the imperial N
surrounded by garlands, and bordered and lined with ermine.  This mantle fell
from the shoulders, and trailed for fully two yards on the floor.

     These changes of toilet made, the cortege started - pages, cuirassiers
and heralds, the Grand Master of Ceremonies and his aides, - a marshal bearing
a cushion on which was placed the ring for the Empress, another marshal
carrying the crown on a cushion.  Following the Empress and her attendants,
came the cortege of the Emperor; first the marshals bearing the crown,
sceptre, and sword of Charlemagne, and the right and globe belonging to
Napoleon; then the Emperor, crowned with a wreath of gold laurel leaves, the
sceptre in one hand, and in the other a baton - emblem of justice, his heavy
royal mantle carried by several princes, a guard of richly dressed ornamental
personages following.

     On entering the cathedral, both the Emperor and the Empress were
presented with holy water, and then began their slow journey up the aisle of
the cathedral to the high altar, where the service took place.  The sceptre,
crown, sword, ring and globe of the Emperor were placed upon the altar, and
beside them were placed the crown, ring, and mantle of the Empress.  The Pope
then anointed the Emperor's head and hands with oil, and the same service was
used immediately after in anointing Josephine. The mass followed, during which
the Pope blessed the imperial ornaments of both Napoleon and Josephine.

     At the close of this service, the Emperor mounted the steps to the altar,
on which the imperial crown was placed, lifted it, and put it himself on his
head; then taking the crown of the Empress in his hands, he descended the
steps to the place where Josephine was kneeling.  With a gesture at once so
gentle and so proud that it impressed the whole splendid audience, he put the
crown upon her head, while the Pope pronounced the orison: "May God crown you
with the crown of glory and justice; may He give you strength and courage
that, through this benediction, and by your own faith and the multiplied
fruits of your good works, you may attain the crown of the eternal kingdom,
through the grace of Him whose reign and empire extends from age to age."

     As the last words of the prayer died away the cortege turned from the
high altar and proceeded slowly down the nave to the point where the throne
had been placed.  At the top of a staircase of some twenty-nine steps was a
large platform, on which a sumptuous arm-chair, richly decorated with
embroideries and golden symbols, had been placed for Napoleon.  To the right
of this seat, and one step lower, was a smaller chair, with similar
decorations, for Josephine.  The Emperor and Empress mounted the steps and
seated themselves.  They were followed by the Pope, who blessed them, and
then, kissing the Emperor on the cheek, turned to the assembly, and pronounced
the words, "Vivat imperator in aternum." The Te Deum, the prayers, the reading
of the Scriptures, the offering, followed; and then, the mass finished, the
oath taken, Napoleon and Josephine descended and attended by their suites,
left the cathedral, and entered their carriage.  The ceremony, from the time
of leaving the Tuileries, had taken five hours.  It was three and a half hours
more before the long procession was ended and they were back again in the
palace.

     That night Napoleon and Josephine dined alone, the Empress wearing her
crown, at her husband's request, so pleased was he with the grace and dignity
with which she carried it.