A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, with a Sketch of Josephine, Empress of the French.

separated from you, and God knows for how long! I am following your counsel; I shall go to-morrow to Navarre. I have only sixteen men in my guard here, and they are all wounded....

But Napoleon had much to occupy him besides his separation from Josephine. Extraordinary difficulties surrounded his new post. Neither the generals nor the men knew anything of...

_It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well._—TESTAMENT OF NAPOLEON, 2d Clause.

Just a week before the marriage of Napoleon with Josephine he had been appointed general-in-chief of the Army of Italy, and two days after the marriage he left for his command....

Although divorced, Josephine was still Empress of the French People, and her income and her position were in keeping with her title. By the decree of the Senate, her income was...

It was in October, 1784, that Napoleon was placed in the Ecole Militaire at Paris, the same school which still faces the Champ de Mars. He was fifteen years old at the time, a t...

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...

When Josephine returned to Paris in 1790, she found the city in full revolution. In the two years she had been gone the States Generals had met, the Bastile had fallen, the Nati...

Consecrated by the Pope, crowned by Napoleon, Josephine’s position seemed impregnable in the eyes of all the world. It was one of dazzling splendor. The little creole whose yout...

For two years after she mounted the throne, Josephine felt tolerably secure in its possession. It was not until the winter of 1806–1807, when Napoleon was busy with war against...

Austria looked with jealousy on this increase of power, and particularly on the change in the institutions of her neighbors. In assuming control of the Italian and Germanic Stat...

But there were wounds in the French nation more profound than those caused by lack of credit, by neglect and corruption. The body which in 1789 made up France had, in the last t...

In December, 1797, he returned to Paris. His whole family were collected there, forming a “Bonaparte colony,” as the Parisians called it. There were Joseph and his wife; Lucien,...

While the preparation for the invasion was going on, the feeling against England was intensified by the discovery of a plot against the life of the First Consul. Georges Cadouda...

“Now we must rebuild, and, moreover, we must rebuild solidly,” said Napoleon to his brother Lucien the day after the _coup d’état_ which had overthrown the Directory and made hi...

The campaign opened May 2, 1813, southwest of Leipsic, with the battle of Lützen. It was Napoleon’s victory, though he could not follow it up, as he had no cavalry. The moral ef...

When it became evident that it was impossible to escape to the United States, Napoleon considered two courses—to call upon the country and renew the conflict, or seek an asylum...

Unhappily for the Empress, her reunion with Napoleon was marred by a delay which irritated the Emperor no little. Josephine was at St. Cloud when she received a note, about Octo...

The proudest monument in the Island of Martinique, in the French West Indies, so any inhabitant will tell you, is the statue of a woman in the town of St. Pierre. The woman thus...

Josephine realized fully that if her victory over her brothers-in-law was complete, it could endure only during her own good behavior—that, if she ever again gave them reason fo...

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....

“Circumstances having induced me to renounce the throne of France, sacrificing my rights to the interests of the country, I reserved for myself the sovereignty of the island of...

If one draws a triangle, its base stretching along the Nieman from Tilsit to Grodno, its apex on the Elbe, he will have a rough outline of the “army of twenty nations” as it lay...

Napoleon amazed at this unexpected popular uprising in Spain, and angry that the spell of invincibility under which his armies had fought, was broken, resolved to undertake the...

“If I were not convinced that his family is as old and as good as my own,” said the Emperor of Austria when he married Marie Louise to Napoleon Bonaparte, “I would not give him...

The favors granted Napoleon for his services at Toulon were extended to his family. Madame Bonaparte was helped by the municipality of Marseilles. Joseph was made commissioner o...

The centralization of France in Napoleon’s hands was not to be allowed to go on without interference. Jacobinism, republicanism, royalism, were deeply-rooted sentiments, and it...

In the five months spent in Paris before the 13th Vendémiaire, Bonaparte saw something of society. One interesting company which he often joined, was that gathered about Madame...

Two unscrupulous and crafty men, both of singular ability, caused the interior trouble which called Napoleon from Spain. These men were Talleyrand and Fouché. The latter we saw...

When Napoleon, in 1805, was obliged to abandon the descent on England and turn the magnificent army gathered at Boulogne against Austria, he by no means gave up the idea of one...

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, Napoleo...

In the spring of 1803 the treaty of Amiens, which a year before had ended the long war with England, was broken. Both countries had many reasons for complaint. Napoleon was angr...

“This child in concert with our Eugène will constitute our happiness and that of France,” so Napoleon had written Josephine after the birth of the King of Rome, but it soon beca...

By the spring of 1812 Josephine had adjusted herself admirably to her new life. She had conquered her suspicions, acquired self-control, taken up useful duties. Her position was...