THREE GENERATIONS:  MADAME LA MERE, MARIE LOUISE, AND THE KING OF ROME

It seems as though Hell had been let loose on this great man and his family.  The crowned heads of Europe and the plutocrats stopped at nothing in order that they might make his ruin complete.  They dare not run the risk of putting him to death outright, but they engineered, by means of willing tools, a plan that was unheard-of in its atrocious character.  They poured stories of unfaithfulness into the ears of a faithless woman whose name will go down to posterity as an ignoble wife and callous mother.  She took with her into Austria the King of Rome, a beautiful child who was put under the care of Austrian tutors.  He was watched as though he held the destinies of empires in the hollow of his hand.  His father’s name was not allowed to fall on his youthful ears, and more than one tutor was dismissed because he secretly told him something of his father’s fame.  Treated as a prisoner, spied upon by Metternich’s satellites, not allowed to have any visitors without this immortal Chancellor’s permission, not allowed to communicate with his father’s family or with Frenchmen, this pathetic figure, stuffed with Austrian views, is seized with a growing desire to learn the history of his father, who declared in a letter to his brother Joseph in 1814 that he would rather see his son strangled than see him brought up in Vienna as an Austrian prince.

Prince Napoleon in his excellent book-“Napoleon and His Detractors”-refers to the young Prince playing a game of billiards with Marmont and Don Miguel, the former having been one of his father’s most important generals.  He it was who betrayed him, and now he is become the Duke’s confidant and instructor.  The Prince says that his cousin asked to be told about the deeds that his father had done, his fall, and exile.  There does not appear to be any record in existence as to what Marmont conveyed or withheld from the son of Marie Louise, but there is much evidence to show that the young man was not only an eager student of his father’s career, but fully realised his own importance and influence on European politics.

It has been stated that until 1830 he really knew nothing of passing events in the land of his birth.  Obenaus, his tutor, states in his diary, January 18, 1825:  “During the afternoon walk, the political relations of the Prince to the Imperial family and to the rest of the world were discussed.”  Count Neipperg advised him to study the French language, and his reply was:  “This advice has not fallen on an unfruitful or an ungrateful soil.  Every imaginable motive inspires me with the desire to perfect myself in, and to overcome the difficulties of, a language which at the present moment forms the most essential part of my studies.  It is the language in which my father gave the word of command in all his battles, in which his name was covered with glory, and in which he has left us unparalleled memoirs of the art of war; while to the last he expressed the wish that I should never repudiate the nation into which I was born." He further adds, “The chief aim of my life must be not to remain unworthy of my father’s fame.”

His grandfather, the Emperor Francis-who was reputed to be quite devoted to him-said, “I wish that the Duke should revere the memory of his father.”  “Do not suppress the truth,” says he to Metternich (the disloyal friend of Napoleon).  “Teach him above all to honour his father’s memory.”  The Chancellor replies, “I will speak to the Duke about his father as I should wish myself to be spoken of to my own son.”  What irony!  Whatever attempts were made at any time to depreciate the Emperor, his son’s loyalty to him never flinched.  He regarded his father in the light of a hero whose glorious traditions were unequalled by any warrior or ruler of men.  He drank in every particle of information he could discover about his father’s life, and was by no means ignorant of what would be his own great destiny should he be permitted to live.

A strong party in France longed to have the son of their Emperor on the throne of France.  A section of the Poles clamoured to have him proclaimed King of Poland after the Polish revolution, and the Greeks claimed him as their future King.  All existing records dealing with the Prince’s view concerning his position indicate quite clearly that he never under-estimated his importance.  He was fully alive to and appreciated the growing devotion to himself, his cause, and to the great name he bore.  We learn from Marshal Marmont that the Prince received him with marked cordiality when the Emperor Francis gave him permission to relate to him his father’s history.  Marmont, like all traitors, never neglected to put forth his popularity with the Emperor Napoleon.  This is a habit with people who do great injury to their friends.  They always make it appear that the injured person is afflicted with growing love for them-they never realise how much they are loathed and mistrusted.

The Prince at first received him with suspicion, then he tolerated him coldly, and it was not until Marmont fascinated him with stories of the genius and unparalleled greatness of his father’s history that the young man subdued his prejudices and encouraged the Marshal in his visits to his apartments, in order that he might learn all that Marmont could tell him of his father’s qualities and accomplishments.  The young Napoleon caused the General to marvel at the quick intelligence he displayed in the pointed comments made on his father’s career.  In recognition of his services Marmont was presented with a portrait of the Prince.

His cousin, Prince Napoleon, son of King Jerome, in his book “Napoleon and His Detractors,” obviously desires to convey the impression that all questions, important or unimportant, relating to the Emperor, were studiously kept from his son, and until he arrived at a certain age there can be little doubt that undue and unnatural precautions were taken to prevent the Emperor’s name being spoken, but the means used for this purpose must have proved abortive, as everything points to him having been well informed.  He appears to have had an instinctive knowledge that nullified the precautions of the Court of Vienna, and especially its culpable Chancellor, Metternich, whose clumsy and heartless treatment is so apparent to all students of history.  Probably this is the policy that prevailed up to 1830 which Prince Napoleon complains of.  Be that as it may, we are persuaded that the Duke was not only well informed, but took a keen interest in the events of his own and of his father’s life, long before the advent of Marmont as his tutor.  For instance, on one occasion his friend, Count Prokesch, dined with his grandfather in 1830, and at table the Prince was afforded great pleasure in having the opportunity of conversing with this distinguished man.  The young Duke knew that Prokesch had broken a lance in 1818 in defence of his father, and he eagerly availed himself of the chance of saying some very complimentary things to the Count.  He informs him that he has “known him a long while, and loved him because he defended his father’s honour at a time when all the world vied with each other to slander his name”; and then he continues:  “I have read your ‘Battle of Waterloo,’ and in order to impress every line of it on my memory I translated it twice in French and Italian." Obviously this young man was neither a dunce nor indolent when his father’s fame and his own interests were in question.

One of the most remarkable features of this pathetic young life is the intense interest his mother’s husband began to take in him, and he probably owed a great deal to the fact that Count Neipperg urged him to make himself familiar with the glory of the Empire and his father’s deeds.  Strange though it may appear, the son of the Great Napoleon and the morganatic husband of his mother were attached to each other in the most intimate way.  If he perceived the immoral relations between Neipperg and Marie Louise, the Duke never seems to have divulged it; but taking into account the passionate love and devotion he had for his father’s memory, it is barely likely that he knew either of the amorous connection or marriage having taken place between the Count and his mother, otherwise he would have had something to say about it, not only to Neipperg himself, but certainly to his friends Prokesch, Baron Obenaus, and Count Dietrichstein, and very naturally his grandfather.  It may be that the circumstances of his life made him cautious, and even cunning, in keeping to himself an affair that was generally approved by the most interested parties, but it is hardly likely that the spirit of natural feeling had been so far crushed out of him as to forbid his openly resenting a further monstrous wrong being done to his Imperial father.

The young Prince was the centre of great political interest, and the object of ungrudging sympathy and devotion of a large public in Europe, and especially in France, and had his life been preserved a few more years he would, in spite of obstacles and prejudices, have been put on the throne of the land of his birth.

Metternich, the inveterate trickster, does not appear to have had any serious thought of encouraging the project of making the Duke Emperor of the French.  His subtle game was to use him as a terror to Louis Philippe when that monarch became refractory or showed signs of covetousness.

The Prince carried himself high above sordid party methods.  He was proud of being heir to a throne that his father had made immortal and he was determined not to soil it.  If it was to be reclaimed, all obstacles must be removed ere he would lend his countenance to it.  There must be a clear, uninterrupted passage.  Thirty-four million souls, it was claimed, were anxious for his restoration to France.  Amongst the leaders were to be found some of his father’s old companions in arms and in exile, amongst whom none were more enthusiastic than the loyal and devoted Count Montholon, Bertrand, the petulant and penitent Gourgaud, and Savary, Duke of Rovigo.  These were joined to thousands of other brave men who would have considered it an honour to shed their last drop of blood for the cause, and in memory of him whom they had loved so well.  The two first-named were executors to his father’s will, in which Napoleon enjoins his son not to attempt to avenge his death but to profit by it.  He reminds him that things have changed.  He was obliged to daunt Europe by his arms, but now the way is to convince her.  His son is urged not to mount the throne by the aid of foreign influence, and he is charged to deserve the approbation of posterity.  He is reminded that “MERIT may be pardoned, but not intrigue,” and that he is to “propagate in all uncivilised and barbarous countries the benefits of Christianity and civilisation.  Religious ideas have more influence than certain narrow-minded philosophers are willing to believe.  They are capable of rendering great services to humanity.”

These are only a few of the excellent thoughts transmitted to the young man from the tragic rock whose memories will ever defame the name of those who combined to commit a crime unequalled in political history.

It is none the less a phenomenon that this “abode of darkness,” so monstrous in the history of its perfidy, should be illumined by the great figure that stamped its fame for evermore with his personality.

One of the last and finest works of genius he did there was to draw up a constitution for his son.  It is doubtful whether Montholon ever succeeded in conveying it to the Prince, who passed on before the legitimate call to put it into practice came.

The Powers that made holy war for the last time on the great soldier with 900,000 men against his 128,000 arrogated the right to outlaw and brand him as the disturber of public peace.  I have already said this was their ostensible plea, but the real reason was his determination to exterminate feudalism and establish democratic institutions as soon as he could bring the different factions into harmony.  He failed, but the colossal cost of his failure in men and money is unthinkable.  His subjugation left Great Britain alone with a debt, as already stated, of eight hundred millions, and then there was no peace.

The constitution intended for his son could have been very beneficially applied to some of the nations represented at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle by the allied sovereigns who declared him an outlaw, and spent their time in allocating slices of other people’s territory to each other.  The only nation that came badly out of the Congress was Great Britain.

This terrible despot, who was beloved by the common people and hated by the oligarchy, left behind him a constitution that might well be adopted by the most democratic countries.

The first article-composed of six words:  “The sovereignty dwells in the nation”-stamps the purpose of it with real democracy.  It might do no harm to embody some of its clauses into our own constitution at the present time.  We very tardily adopted some of its laws long after his death, and we might go on copying to our advantage.  He was a real progressor, but his team was difficult to guide.  Had he been conciliated and allowed to remain at peace, he would have democratised the whole of Europe, but the fear of that, or the legitimacy idea, was undoubtedly the great underlying cause of much of the trouble.  The mistrust and animus against the father was reflected upon the son, who was practically a State prisoner.

During childhood the Prince was strong and healthy, and his robust physique caused favourable comment.  It was not until 1819 that his health became affected by an attack of spotted fever.  This passed away in a few weeks, but the decline of his health, which was attributed to his rapid growth, dates from that period.  He died prematurely on July 22, 1832, at Schoenbrunn, and the accounts which may be relied upon indicate either wilfully careless or incompetent medical treatment.  It is even asserted that this heir to the throne of France, ushered in twenty-one years before as the herald of Peace, was to be regarded as a source of infinite danger, and for that barbaric reason his health was allowed to be slowly and surely undermined until death took him from the restraining influences and crimeful policy of the Courts of Europe.  Great efforts have been made to convince a sceptical public that his early death was the result of youthful indiscretions, but this is stoutly denied by Prokesch, who declares that he was a strictly moral youth, and Baron Obenaus, in his diary, justifies this opinion, if there was nothing else to support it.  Moreover the same Anton, Count Prokesch was asked by Napoleon III. to tell him the truth as to the alleged love affairs, and he averred that the rumours were without foundation.

The King of Rome died at Schoenbrunn in the same room that his father had occupied in 1809.  In Paris a report was put about that he had been poisoned by the Court of Vienna.  This opinion has been handed down, and there are many persons to-day who have a firm belief in its possibility.

Another common rumour, current in 1842, was that Metternich sent a poisoned lemon by Prokesch, which had done its work, and even this highly improbable story is not without reason believed, because Metternich was known to be the most heartless cunning Judas in politics at that time.  He had betrayed the father of the Prince while he was declaring the most loyal friendship.  He admits this, nay, even boasts of it, in his memoirs, and his shameful conduct has its reward by having won for him the stigma of wishing for, and hastening on, the death of an unfortunate young man for whom ordinary manliness should have claimed compassion.  This moral assassin of father and son declared that he had “used all the means in his power to second the hand of God” by trapping Napoleon into the clutches of the combined moralists of Europe.  The Usurper was to be ruined, then peace proclaimed for evermore.  That was their pretence, though it could not have been their conviction.  If it was, they were soon disillusioned.

I made a long journey in company with a Danish statesman a few years ago, and amongst other things that we conversed about was the reign and fall of Napoleon.  This gentleman held up his hands and said to me, “Oh! what a blunder the criminal affair was.  Had the Powers beheld the mission of this man aright, what a blessing it would have been to the world!”-and there is not much difficulty in supporting the view of this Danish gentleman.  The more one probes into the history of the period, the more vivid the blunder appears.

Metternich has the distinction of being eulogised by M. Taine, who was neither fair nor accurate, and there is not much glory in being championed by a man whose book is made up of libels.  Metternich may here be dismissed as being only one of many whose highest ambition was to destroy the man whom the French nation had made their monarch.  Their aim was accomplished, but the spirit that evolved from the wreck of the Revolution still lives on, and may rise again to be avenged for the great crime that was committed.

Whether the gifted and amiable son of the Emperor Napoleon was despatched by the cruellest of all assassinations or came by his premature death by neglect, or by natural and constitutional causes, is a matter that may never be cleared up, though the actions of the high commissioners in the nauseous drama cause lingering doubts to prevail as to their innocence.  It is certain that several determined attempts were made to take the Prince’s life, and large sums were offered to desperadoes to carry out this murderous deed.  Then the Court of Vienna were in constant fear of his abduction.  His invitations to come to France were perpetual.

A lady cousin-the Countess Napoleone Camerata, daughter of Elisa Bacciochi, a sister of the Emperor, easily obtained a passport from the Pope’s Secretary of State, and coquetted so successfully with the Austrian Ambassador, that he gave it a double guarantee of good faith by signing it.  This impetuous and eccentric female made her way uninterruptedly to Vienna, found her cousin on the doorstep, made a rush for him and seized his hand, then shouted, “Who can prevent my kissing my sovereign’s hand?” She also found means to convey letters to him.  There is not much said about this Napoleonic dash, but from the records that are available the incident set the heroes-comprising the allied Courts (including France)-into a flutter of excitement.  The fuss created by the enterprise of the pretty little Countess gives a lurid insight into the wave of comic derangement which must have taken possession of men’s minds.

This lady received a pension during the Third Empire, and in eighteen years it mounted to over six million francs.  She died in Brittany, 1869, and left her fortune to the Prince Imperial.

That there was a determined and well-conceived plot to carry the Duke off is undoubted, but the counter-plots prevailed against the more ardent Bonapartists who were thirsting for a resurrection of the glorious Empire.  Prince Louis Napoleon, the eldest son of King Louis, disagreed with the idea of his family.  He looked upon the Emperor’s son as being an Austrian Prince, imbued with Austrian methods and policy, and therefore dangerous to the best interests of France.  This Prince went so far as to hail with pleasure the crowning of Louis Philippe.  He died in 1831.  In the following year his Imperial cousin passed on too, and his demise was a great blow to the Bonapartists’ cause, and it well-nigh killed the aged Madame Mere, who had centred all her hopes in him.  Marie Louise announced his death, to his grandmother and asks her to “accept on this sorrowful occasion the assurance of the kindly feeling entertained for her by her affectionate daughter,” and here is the cold, dignified, crushing reply from Madame Mere.  It is dictated, and dated Rome, August 6, 1832:-

“Madame, notwithstanding the political shortsightedness which has constantly deprived me of all news of the dear child whose death you have been so considerate to announce to me, I have never ceased to entertain towards him the devotion of a mother.  In him I still found an object of some consolation, but to my great age, and to my incessant and painful infirmities, God has seen fit to add this blow as fresh proof of His mercy, since I firmly believe that He will amply atone to him in His glory for the glory of this world.

“Accept my thanks, madame, for having put yourself to this trouble in such sorrowful circumstances to alleviate the bitterness of my grief.  Be sure that it will remain with me all my life.  My condition precludes me from even signing this letter, and I must therefore crave your permission to delegate the task to my brother.”

Never a word about the lady’s relationship to her son or to herself.  Her reply is studiously formal, but every expression of it betokens grief and thoughts of the great martyr whom the woman she was writing to had wronged.  There is not a syllable of open reproach, though there runs through it a polite, withering indictment that must assuredly have cut deeply into the callous nature of this notorious Austrian Archduchess who had played her son so falsely.

This wonderful mother of a wonderful family seems to have been the least suspected of political plotting of all the Bonapartists.  She was respected by all, and revered and beloved by many.  Crowned heads were not indifferent to her strength and nobility of character, but the stupid old King who succeeded her son to the throne of France got it into his head that she was harbouring agents in Corsica to excite rebellion, and he thereupon had a complaint lodged against her.  Pius VII., who knew Madame Mere, sent his secretary to see her about this supposed intrigue.  She listened to what the representative of the Pope had to say, and then with stern dignity began her reply:-

“Monseigneur, I do not possess the millions with which they credit me, but let M. de Blacas tell his master Louis XVIII. that if I did, I should not employ them to foment troubles in Corsica, or to gain adherents for my son in France, since he already has enough; I should use them to fit out a fleet to liberate him from St. Helena, where the most infamous perfidy is holding him captive.”

Then she bowed reverently and left the room.

This was indeed a slashing rebuff both to Pius VII. and the “Most
Christian King.”

Another very good story is told of this extraordinary old lady by H. Noel Williams.  It appears she persisted after the fall of the Empire in using the Imperial arms on her carriage.

“Why should I discontinue this symbol?” she asked.  “Europe bowed to the dust before my son’s arms for ten years, and her sovereigns have not forgotten it.”

On one occasion she was out driving when a block occurred.  Two Austrian officers, who were riding past, boldly looked into the carriage.  Madame Mere, observing the Austrian uniform, to which she had an aversion, was excited to indignation, so letting down the window she exclaimed to them, “What, gentlemen, is your pleasure?  If it is to see the mother of the Emperor Napoleon, here she is!” The officers were naturally crestfallen.  They respectfully saluted and rode off.  These stinging shots of hers were quite disturbing; they always went home, and reached too far for the comfort of her son’s persecutors.

Her letter to the allied sovereigns who met at Aix-la-Chapelle is one of the most trenchant indictments that has ever been penned.  Its logic, its brave, though courteous, appeal for justice and magnanimity, and above all the echo of motherly love which characterises it, stamp it as a document worth cherishing.  The last paragraph will fascinate the imagination of generations yet to come, and heavy judgment will be laid on those that were committing the crime.

“Reasons of State,” she says, “have their limits, and posterity, which forgets nothing, admires above everything the generosity of conquerors.”

The allied sovereigns were afraid to answer the letter.  Better for their reputations if they had obviated the necessity of writing it.  The testimony of Pius VII. is that she was “a God-fearing woman who deserved to be honoured by every prince in Christendom.”

A great joy came to Madame Mere in 1830, when they told her that the Government had decided to replace the statue of Napoleon on the Vendome Column.  She went into ecstasies over this, but bewailed her lameness (she had broken her thigh that year) and total blindness, which would forever prevent her beholding the statue.  She turned away from these painful reflections and comforted herself with a few words of sad humour, remarking that if she could have been in Paris as in former days, God would have given her strength to climb to the top of the column to assure herself that it was there.  She refused to separate her lot from that of her children, and would not accept the proposal that the sentence of banishment should be repealed unless it included all her family.  This remarkable woman died February 2, 1836, aged eighty-five, and Napoleon III. had the remains of his grandmother and Cardinal Fesch removed to Ajaccio in 1851.  Six years later the remains were again removed and deposited in a vault constructed to receive them in a church which was built subsequent to the first interment at Ajaccio.

Pity and strange it is that the Emperor’s faithless second wife should be noticed at all in history.  Happily, very few even of those historians who are anti-Napoleon have anything very complimentary to say of her.  She survived her son the King of Rome fifteen years, and the earth claimed her in December, 1847, her age being fifty-six.  Had this amiable adulteress, who wished success to the allied armies against her husband, lived a little longer, she would have witnessed the humiliating spectacle of her father’s successor being forced to abdicate his throne in favour of the nephew of her Imperial husband, whose memory all noble hearts revere, and whose sufferings, domestic and public, will ever lie at the door of this woman who allowed herself to be the base accomplice of a great assassination.  The most fitting reference to her death appeared in the Times newspaper, which said that “nothing in her life became her like the leaving it.”  On April 15, 1821, in the third paragraph of his will, Napoleon, with consistent magnanimity, if not wilful indifference to this passive, icy female’s abandonment of him, says:  “I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest Marie Louise.  I retain for her, to my last moment, the most tender sentiments.  I beseech her to watch, in order to preserve my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy.”  What irony!

It is quite a reasonable proposition to suppose that Napoleon must have had a secret suspicion of his wife’s infidelity.  It is even hard to believe that he had not a full knowledge of her actual association with Count Neipperg.  It will be observed that while his reference to her is dutiful, not to say tender, there is still something lacking, as though he kept something snugly in the back of his head, something like the following:-“I cannot make this historical document without alluding to you for my son’s sake, though I know full well you have wronged me and consorted with my enemies and betrayers.  I know all this, but I am about to pass on, and true to my instincts of compassion and to my Imperial dignity, I must carry my sorrow and grief with me, and having given you as good a testimonial as I can, I must leave you to settle accounts with posterity as to your conduct towards me and your adopted country.  I shall not do by you as you have done.  I hope full allowance will be made for all you have made me suffer.  Meanwhile, I am about to relieve the digestion of Kings by passing to the Elysian Fields, there to be greeted by Kleber, Desaix, Bessieres, Duroc, Ney, Murat, Massena, and Berthier, and we shall talk of the deeds we have done together.  Yes, Marie Louise, I bend under the terrible yoke your father, his Chancellor, and the allied satellites have made for me, and yet I keep these incomparable warriors of Europe in a state of alarm.  I wish you joy of your allies, who have behaved so nobly to your husband in captivity.  I have often thought in my solitude, Louise, that it would have been a more popular national union had I carried out my intention of taking for my second wife a Frenchwoman.  It may be that my marriage with you, consummated by every token of peace and goodwill, was really the beginning of my downfall.  Ah! how much more noble of you to have followed me in my adversity to Elba.  You might have done great service to France and to your native land, to say nothing of the possibility of breaking up the coalition against me and saving rivers of blood.  Waterloo might never have been fought had you emulated your matchless sister-in-law, Catherine of Westphalia, in her attitude of supreme womanhood, and your fame might have surpassed that of Joan of Arc, and been handed down to distant ages as an example of heroic firmness and devotion, and then you would have been beatified by the Church and acclaimed a saint by the people to which you belong.  You shared with me the unequalled grandeur of the most powerful throne on earth.  I was devoted to you and you betrayed me.  Your father insisted that you should break your marriage vow and found in you a willing accomplice in the outrage committed against me.  You had shared my throne, and I had reason to expect that every human instinct would call you to my side in my exile, and the thought that burns into my soul is that in the infamy of years, posterity will not be reproached for averting its eye from you as well as from that heartless father who requested you to forsake me.  Catherine of Westphalia did better.  She defied her father, and clung more closely to her husband when he needed all the succour of a sympathetic being to comfort him in his hour of dire misfortune.  These gloomy thoughts are forced upon me by every law of nature, and now that I have but a brief time left, I am impelled to bequeath to you in the third paragraph of my last will and testament some tender remembrance of you.  I do this notwithstanding that you, Marie Louise, Empress of the French, prayed to God that He would bless the arms of the enemies of the land of your adoption.  And then that letter which I sent you from Grenoble in a nutshell on my way from Elba to Paris to reclaim the throne which treason had deprived me of.  I requested you to come to me with my son the King of Rome.  You ignored that, as you did other communications which I sent, and which I am assured you received.  I make no public accusation against you. That would be undignified and unkingly.”

In spite of his apparent unaltered affection for his wife, Napoleon reflectively made occasional remarks during his exile which indicated that her conduct was much in his mind; and the foregoing portrayal of his sentiments towards her may be regarded as a human probability.  The remarkable thing is that he should have made any reference at all to this erotic woman in his will.  It puzzled his companions in exile, who knew well enough that she was the cause of much mental anguish to him.  It afflicted him so keenly on two notable occasions that he drew pathetically a comparison between her conduct and that which would have been Josephine’s under similar circumstances.  It is an astonishing characteristic in Napoleon that he always forgave those who had injured him most.

In order to emphasise the spirit of forgiveness, he specially refers to a matter that must have taken a lot of forgiving.  In the sixth paragraph of his will he says:  “The two unfortunate results of the invasions of France, when she had still so many resources, are to be attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and La Fayette.  I forgive them-may the posterity of France forgive them as I do.”  Then in the seventh paragraph he pardons his brother Louis for the libel he published in 1820, although, as he states, “It is replete with false assertions and falsified documents.”  He heaps coals of fire on Marie Louise by requesting Marchand to preserve some of his hair and to cause a bracelet to be made of it with a little gold clasp.  It is highly probable that the wife of Count Neipperg would rather not have been reminded of her amorous habits and other culpable conduct by these little attentions.

Neipperg, this foul and willing instrument of seduction, whose baseness insults every moral law, suffered great agony for three years from an incurable disease, and died in December, 1828, aged fifty-seven years.  The Kings and régicides in their ferocious fear had made it an important part of their policy that Marie Louise should be the pivot on which the complete ruin of Napoleon should centre, so Neipperg was fixed upon as a fit and proper person to mould the ex-Empress into passive obedience to the wishes of her husband’s inveterate enemies.  Meneval notes that this man had already amours to his credit.  He had indeed run away with another man’s wife, and had issue by her.  Probably his amorous reputation influenced the oligarchy in their choice.

In order that the plan might be carried out, he adroitly improvised falsehood, poured into her ears stories of faithlessness on the part of her Imperial husband, read books and pamphlets manufactured and exactly suited for the purpose he had in view.  His instructions were to carry things as far he could get them to go, and he did this with revolting success.

God’s broad earth has not known a more ugly incident than that of carrying personal hatred and political cowardice to such a pitch of delirium as that of forcing a weak woman to forsake her husband, sacrifice the interests of her child, and tempt her to break her marriage vow in order that her husband’s ruin might be more completely assured.  As a matter of high policy its wickedness will never be excelled.

At the death of her morganatic husband Marie Louise became “inconsolable.”  She gave orders for a “costly mausoleum to be put up so that her grief might be durably established.”  In reply to a letter of condolence written to her by the eminent Italian, Dr. Aglietti, in which he seems to have made some courteous and consoling observations, she says “that all the efforts of art were powerless, for it is impossible to fight against the Divine Will.  You are very right in saying that time and religion can alone diminish the bitterness of such a loss.  Alas! the former, far from exercising its power over me, only daily increases my grief.”  This “amiable,” grief-stricken royal sham, overcharged with expressions of religious fervour, succumbs again to her natural instincts.  “Time,” she avers, “cannot console,” but only increases the depth of her grief for “our dear departed.”

Her sentiments would be consummately impressive were it not that we know how wholly deceitful she was without in the least knowing it.  But the creeping horror of time is quickly softened by her marriage in 1833 to a Frenchman called De Bombelles, who was in the service of her native land, and is said to have had English blood in his veins.  In spite of the loyal effort of Meneval to make her ironic procession through life appear as favourable as he can, the only true impression that can be arrived at is that she was without shame, self-control, or pity.

A strange sympathiser of Napoleon in his dire distress was a daughter of Maria Theresa and a sister of Marie Antoinette-Queen Marie Caroline, grandmother to Marie Louise.  She had regarded the Emperor of the French with peculiar aversion, but when his power was broken and he became the victim of persecution, this good woman forgot her prejudices, sent for Meneval, and said to him that she had had cause to regard Napoleon at one time as an enemy, but now that he was in trouble she forgot the past.  She declared that if it was still the determination of the Court of Vienna to sever the bonds of unity between man and wife in order that the Emperor might be deprived of consolation, it was her granddaughter’s duty to assume disguise, tie sheets together, lower herself from the window, and bolt.

There is little doubt the dexterous and spirited old lady gave Louise sound advice, and had she acted under her holy influence, her name would have become a monument of noblemindedness, a lesson, in fact, against striking a vicious, cowardly blow at the unfortunate.  It is moreover highly probable that Queen Caroline felt, at the time, that the political marriage of her granddaughter to the French Emperor was ill-assorted and tragic, but the deed having been done, she upheld the divine law of marriage.  Besides, she knew that Napoleon had been an indulgent, kind husband to the uneven-minded girl, and that, whatever his faults may have been, it was her duty to comfort him and share in his sorrow as she had so amply shared in his glory.  Hence she urges a reunion with the exile, but the ex-Empress may have made it impossible ere this to enjoy the consoling sweets of conjugal companionship, and her subsequent conduct makes it more than likely that she was too deeply compromised to abandon the vortex and face the penalty of the errors she had committed.

“I could listen,” says Napoleon, “to the intelligence of the death of my wife, my son, or of all my family, without a change of feature-not the slightest emotion or alteration of countenance would be visible.  But when alone in my chamber, then I suffer.  Then the feelings of the man burst forth.”

We are not accustomed to think of this strong personality as being overcome with soft emotions.  We have regarded him as the personification of strength, and yet with all his gigantic power over men and himself, he had a real womanly supply of human tenderness.  Once he was seen weeping before the portrait of his much beloved son, whom he called “Mon pauvre petit chou.”  “I do not blush to admit,” said he on a memorable occasion, “that I have a good deal of a mother’s tenderness.  I could never count on the faithfulness of a father who did not love his children.”