extension of napoleon’s empire—family affairs
napoleon’s influence in europe was now at its zenith. he was literally “king of kings,” as he was popularly called, and the bonaparte family was rapidly displacing the bourbon. joseph had been made king of naples in 1806. eliza was princess of lucques and piombino. louis, married to hortense, had been king of holland since 1806. pauline had been the princess borghese since 1803; caroline, the wife of murat, was grand duchess of cleves and berg; jerome was king of westphalia; eugène de beauharnais, viceroy of italy, was married to a princess of bavaria.
the members of napoleon’s family were elevated only on condition that they act strictly in accordance with his plans. they must marry so as to cement the ties necessary to his kingdom. they must arrange their time, form their friendships, spend their money, as it best served the interests of his great scheme of conquest. the interior affairs of their kingdoms were in reality centralized in his hands as perfectly as those of france. he watched the private and public conduct of his kings and nobles, and criticised them with absolute frankness and extraordinary common sense. the ground on which he protected them is well explained in the following letter, written in january, 1806, to count miot de mélito:
180
joseph bonaparte in his coronation robes. 1808.
engraved by c. s. pradier in 1813, after gérard.
181“you are going to rejoin my brother. you will tell him that i have made him king of naples; that he will continue to be grand elector, and that nothing will be changed as regards his relations with france. but impress upon him that the least hesitation, the slightest wavering, will ruin him entirely. i have another person in my mind who will replace him should he refuse.... at present all feelings of affection yield to state reasons. i recognize only those who serve me as relations. my fortune is not attached to the name of bonaparte, but to that of napoleon. it is with my fingers and with my pen that i make children. to-day i can love only those whom i esteem. joseph must forget all our ties of childhood. let him make himself esteemed. let him acquire glory. let him have a leg broken in battle. then i shall esteem him. let him give up his old ideas. let him not dread fatigue. look at me: the campaign i have just terminated, the movement, the excitement, have made me stout. i believe that if all the kings of europe were to coalesce against me, i should have a ridiculous paunch.”
joseph, bent on being a great king, boasted now and then to napoleon of his position in naples. his brother never failed to silence him with the truth, if it was blunt and hard to digest.
“when you talk about the fifty thousand enemies of the queen, you make me laugh.... you exaggerate the degree of hatred which the queen has left behind at naples: you do not know mankind. there are not twenty persons who hate her as you suppose, and there are not twenty persons who would not surrender to one of her smiles. the strongest feeling of hatred on the part of a nation is that inspired by another nation. your fifty thousand men are the enemies of the french.”
with jerome, napoleon had been particularly incensed because of his marriage with miss patterson. in 1804 he wrote of that affair:
“... jerome is wrong to think that he will be able to count upon any weakness on my part, for, not having the rights of a father, i cannot entertain for him the feeling of a father; a father allows himself to be blinded, and it pleases him to be blinded because he identifies his son with himself.... but what am i to jerome? sole instrument of my destiny, i owe nothing to my brothers. they have made an abundant harvest out of what i have accomplished in the way of glory; but for all that, they must not abandon the field and deprive me of the aid i have a right to expect from them. they will cease to be anything for me, directly they take a road opposed to mine. if i exact so much from my brothers who have already rendered many services, if i have abandoned the one who, in mature age [lucien], refused to follow my advice, what must not jerome, who is still young, and who is known only for his neglect of duty, expect? if he does nothing for me, i shall see in this the decree of destiny, which has decided that i shall do nothing for him....”
182
jerome bonaparte. 1808.
“engraved by i. g. müller, knight, and frederich müller, son, engravers to his majesty the king of würtemberg. after a design made at cassel by madame kinson.”
183jerome yielded later to his brother’s wishes, and in 1807 was rewarded with the new kingdom of westphalia. napoleon kept close watch of him, however, and his letters are full of admirable counsels. the following is particularly valuable, showing, as it does, that napoleon believed a government would be popular and enduring only in proportion to the liberty and prosperity it gave the citizens.
“what the german peoples desire with impatience [he told jerome], is that persons who are not of noble birth, and who have talents, shall have an equal right to your consideration and to public employment (with those who are of noble birth); that every sort of servitude and of intermediate obligations between the sovereign and the lowest class of the people should be entirely abolished. the benefits of the code napoleon, the publicity of legal procedure, the establishment of the jury system, will be the distinctive characteristics of your monarchy.... i count more on the effect of these benefits for the extension and strengthening of your kingdom, than upon the result of the greatest victories. your people ought to enjoy a liberty, an equality, a well-being, unknown to the german peoples.... what people would wish to return to the arbitrary government of prussia, when it has tasted the benefits of a wise and liberal administration? the peoples of germany, france, italy, spain, desire equality, and demand that liberal ideas should prevail.... be a constitutional king.”
louis in holland was never a king to napoleon’s mind. he especially disliked his quarrels with his wife. in 1807 napoleon wrote louis, apropos of his domestic relations, a letter which is a good example of scores of others he sent to one and another of his kings and princes about their private affairs.
184
marie pauline bonaparte, princess borghese.
this graceful portrait of the most beautiful of napoleon’s sisters, is from the brush of madame benoit, and belongs to the versailles collection.
185“you govern that country too much like a capuchin. the goodness of a king should be full of majesty.... a king orders, and asks nothing from any one.... when people say of a king that he is good, his reign is a failure.... your quarrels with the queen are known to the public. you should exhibit at home that paternal and effeminate character you show in your manner of governing.... you treat a young wife as you would command a regiment. distrust the people by whom you are surrounded; they are nobles.... you have the best and most virtuous of wives and you render her miserable. allow her to dance as much as she likes; it is in keeping with her age. i have a wife who is forty years of age; from the field of battle i write to her to go to balls, and you wish a young woman of twenty to live in a cloister, or, like a nurse, to be always washing her children.... render the mother of your children happy. you have only one way of doing so, by showing her esteem and confidence. unfortunately you have a wife who is too virtuous: if you had a coquette, she would lead you by the nose. but you have a proud wife, who is offended and grieved at the mere idea that you can have a bad opinion of her. you should have had a wife like some of those whom i know in paris. she would have played you false, and you would have been at her feet....
“napoleon.”
with his sisters he was quite as positive. while josephine adapted herself with grace and tact to her great position, the bonaparte sisters, especially pauline, were constantly irritating somebody by their vanity and jealousy. the following letter to pauline shows how little napoleon spared them when their performances came to his ears:
“madame and dear sister: i have learned with pain that you have not the good sense to conform to the manners and customs of the city of rome; that you show contempt for the inhabitants, and that your eyes are unceasingly turned towards paris. although occupied with vast affairs, i nevertheless desire to make known my wishes, and i hope that you will conform to them.
“i love your husband and his family, be amiable, accustom yourself to the usages of rome, and put this in your head: that if you follow bad advice you will no longer be able to count upon me. you may be sure that you will find no support in paris, and that i shall never receive you there without your husband. if you quarrel with him, it will be your fault, and france will be closed to you. you will sacrifice your happiness and my esteem.
“bonaparte.”
186
elisa bacciochi, grand duchess of tuscany, eldest sister of napoleon (1777–1820).
engraved by morghen in 1814, after counis.
187this supervision of policy, relations, and conduct extended to his generals. the case of general berthier is one to the point. chief of napoleon’s staff in italy, he had fallen in love at milan with a madame visconti, and had never been able to conquer his passion. in egypt napoleon called him “chief of the lovers’ faction,” that part of the army which, because of their desire to see wives or sweethearts, were constantly revolting against the campaign, and threatening to desert.
in 1804 berthier had been made marshal, and in 1806 napoleon wished to give him the princedom of neufchatel; but it was only on condition that he give up madame de visconti, and marry.
“i exact only one condition, which is that you get married. your passion has lasted long enough. it has become ridiculous; and i have the right to hope that the man whom i have called my companion in arms, who will be placed alongside of me by posterity, will no longer abandon himself to a weakness without example.... you know that no one likes you better than i do, but you know also that the first condition of my friendship is that it must be made subordinate to my esteem.”
berthier fled to josephine for help, weeping like a child; but she could do nothing, and he married the woman chosen for him. three months after the ceremony, the husband of madame de visconti died and berthier, broken-hearted, wrote to the prince borghese:
“you know how often the emperor pressed me to obtain a divorce for madame de visconti. but a divorce was always repugnant to the feelings in which i was educated, and therefore i waited. to-day madame de visconti is free, and i might have been the happiest of men. but the emperor forced me into a marriage which hinders me from uniting myself to the only woman i ever loved. ah, my dear prince, all that the emperor has done and may yet do for me, will be no compensation for the eternal misfortunes to which he has condemned me.”
never was napoleon more powerful than at the end of the period we have been tracing so rapidly, never had he so looked the emperor. an observer who watched him through 188the te deum sung at notre dame in his honor, on his return from tilsit, says: “his features, always calm and serious, recalled the cameos which represent the roman emperors. he was small; still his whole person, in this imposing ceremony, was in harmony with the part he was playing. a sword glittering with precious stones was at his side, and the glittering diamond called the “regent” formed its pommel. its brilliancy did not let us forget that this sword was the sharpest and the most victorious that the world had seen since those of alexander and c?sar.”
certainly he never worked more prodigiously. the campaigns of 1805–1807 were, in spite of their rapid movement,—indeed, because of it,—terribly fatiguing for him; that they were possible at all was due mainly to the fact that they had been made on paper so many times in his study. when he was consul the only room opening from his study was filled with enormous maps of all the countries of the world. this room was presided over by a competent cartographer. frequently these maps were brought to the study and spread upon the floor. napoleon would get down upon them on all fours, and creep about, compass and red pencil in hand, comparing and measuring distances, and studying the configuration of the land. if he was in doubt about anything, he referred it to his librarian, who was expected to give him the fullest details.
attached to his cabinet were skilful translators, whose business was not only to translate diplomatic correspondence, but to gather from foreign sources full information about the armies of his enemies. méneval declares that the emperor knew the condition of foreign armies as well as he did that of his own.
the amount of information he had about other lands was largely due to his ability to ask questions. when he sent to an agent for a report, he rattled at him a volley of questions, 189always to the point; and the agent knew that it would never do to let one go unanswered.
while carrying on the austrian and prussian campaigns of 1805–1807, napoleon showed, as never before, his extraordinary capacity for attending to everything. the number of despatches he sent out was incredible. in the first three months of 1807, while he was in poland, he wrote over seventeen hundred letters and despatches.
it was not simply war, the making of kingdoms, the directions of his new-made kings; minor affairs of the greatest variety occupied him. while at boulogne, tormented by the failure of the english invasion and the war against austria, he ordered that horse races should be established “in those parts of the empire the most remarkable for the horses they breed; prizes shall be awarded to the fleetest horses.” the very day after the battle of friedland, he was sending orders to paris about the form and site of a statue to the memory of the bishop of vannes. he criticised from poland the quarrels of parisian actresses, ordered canals, planned there for the bourse and the odeon theatre. the newspapers he watched as he did when in paris, reprimanded this editor, suspended that, forbade the publication of news of disasters to the french navy, censured every item honorable to his enemies. to read the bulletins issued from jena to friedland, one would believe that the writer had no business other than that of regulating the interior affairs of france. this care of details went, as pasquier says, to the “point of minuteness, or, to speak plainly, to that of charlatanism;” but it certainly did produce a deep impression upon france. that he could establish himself five hundred leagues from paris, in the heart of winter, in a country encircled by his enemies, and yet be in daily communication with his capital, could direct even its least important affairs as if he were present, could know what every person of influence, from 190the secretary of state to the humblest newspaper man, was doing, caused a superstitious feeling to rise in france, and in all europe, that the emperor of the french people was not only omnipotent, but omnipresent.