CHAPTER IV

Edict unbaptizing the King of Rome--Anecdotes of the childhood of the Duc de Reichstadt--Letter of Sir Hudson Lowe announcing the death of Napoleon

It was at Schönbrünn, in the same palace in which the emperor lived during 1805, after Austerlitz, and, in 1809, after Wagram, that Marie-Louis and her son were received by the Imperial family of Austria. As the first care of England had been to despoil Napoleon of his title of Emperor, so the first care of Francis II. was to take away the name of Napoleon from his grandson.

On 22 July 1818 the Emperor of Austria published the following edict:--

"We, Francis II., by the grace of God, Emperor of Austria; King of Jerusalem, Hungary, Bohemia, of Lombardy and of Venice, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Esclavonia, Gallicia, Lodomeria and Illyria; Archduke of Austria, Duke of Lorraine, of Saltzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the high and low Silesia; Grand-Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Count-Prince of Hapsburg and of the Tyrol, etc. etc.; would have it known that--As we find that, in consequence of the act of the Vienna Congress and the negotiations which have since taken place in Paris with our principal allies, in putting into execution in the matter of determining the title, rank and personal relations of Prince François Joseph-Charles, son of our beloved daughter Marie-Louise, Archduchess of Austria, Duchess of Parma, of Plaisance and of Guastalla, we have accordingly decreed as follows:--

"1. We give to Prince François-Joseph-Charles, son of our beloved daughter the Archduchess Marie-Louise, the title of Duc de Reichstadt, and we at the same time command that in future all our authorities and every private person shall give him, when addressing him either by word of mouth or in writing, at the beginning of the speech, or heading of a letter, the title of Most Serene Duke, and in the text that of Most Serene Highness.

"2. We permit him to have and to make use of special armorial bearings: to wit, gules with fesse of gold, two lions passant with their backs turned to the right, one in chief the other in point; one oval placed on a ducal mantle and stamped with a ducal crown; for support two griffins, sable armed, picked out and crowned with gold, holding banners on which the ducal arms shall be repeated.

"3. Prince François Joseph-Charles, Duc de Reichstadt, will take rank in the Court and throughout the whole extent of our Empire, immediately after the princes of our family and the Archdukes of Austria.

"Two identical copies of the present declaration and ordinance, signed by us,'have been dispatched to inform every one whose business it is to conform to them. One copy has been deposited in our private family archives of Court and State. Issued in our capital and residence of Vienna, the 22nd of July of the year 1818, the twenty-seventh of our reign. FRANÇOIS"

It was, as one can see, impossible better to conceal this poor intruder, of which the family was ashamed. There was no more mention of his being a Frenchman, or his name of Napoleon, than if France had not existed or than if it had never had an Empire. He will no longer have any family name: he will have the name of a duchy; he will not have that of _Majesty_ or _Sire_; he is to be Most Serene Highness. Of the French Eagle, the eagle which in 1804 flew from the Pyramids to Vienna, which in 1814 flew from steeple to steeple as far as the towers of Notre-Dame, there is no more question than of the name of the nationality; the Duke of Reichstadt will have _two lions d'or passant upon gules,_ like a count of the Holy Empire--not even the Buonaparte star; not even the bees of the isle of Elba. He will take rank at Court after the princes of the Imperial family. Thus, he is not even a prince of the Imperial family in his own right through his mother!--Silence as to his father! He has no father and never had; moreover, the father he might have had calls himself simply, or is so called by Sir Hudson Lowe, _General Bonaparte._ True, there is a future for the poor disinherited one in the love of his grandfather, who worships him; if he behaves himself well, he will be a colonel in an Austrian or a Hungarian regiment! There was also the future of Marcellus and the one that Providence is keeping for him out of its profound pity! And yet the poor child remembered; and that was his martyrdom. One day--he was scarcely six years old--he came up to the emperor, leant against his knees, and said--

"Dear grandfather, is it not true that when I was in Paris I had pages?"

"Yes," replied the emperor, "I believe you had."

"Is it not true, too, that they called me the King of Rome?"

"Yes. You were called King of Rome."

"Well, then, grandpapa, what does being King of Rome mean?"

"It is useless to explain it to you, as you are no longer it."

"But why am I not?"

"My child," replied the emperor, "when you are grown up, it will be easy to instruct you on that point. For the moment, I will just tell you that, in addition to my title of Emperor of Austria, I join that of King of Jerusalem, without having any sort of power over the city. Very well, you are King of Rome as I am King of Jerusalem."

Another time the young prince was playing with lead soldiers, amongst which were a good number of irregular Cossacks. A painter, M. Hummel, who was painting his portrait, came to him.

"Have you ever seen Cossacks, monseigneur?" he asked.

"Yes, certainly, I have seen them," replied the child: "they were Cossacks who escorted us when we left France."

The painter asked M. Dietrichstein, his tutor, when the prince's portrait was finished, "With what order ought I to decorate His Highness, Monsieur le Comte?"

"With the Order of Saint-Stephen, which His Majesty the Emperor of Austria sent him in his infancy."

"But, Monsieur le Comte," said the child, "I have many others besides that!"

"Yes, monseigneur; but you do not wear them any longer."

"Why?"

"Because they have been abolished."

Poor child! it was not the orders that had been abolished; but his fortune which had fallen.

At that age, the Duc de Reichstadt was perfectly beautiful, with great blue eyes and rose-leaf complexion, and long, fair, curly hair falling on to his shoulders. All his movements were full of grace and prettiness; he spoke French with the accent peculiar to Parisians. He had to learn German, and it was a great business and a daily and hourly struggle and difficulty.

"If I speak German," he said, "I shall not be French any more."

However, the Duc de Reichstadt was obliged to resign himself to learn M. de Metternich's tongue, and it was the one he constantly spoke when he had learned it with the princes of the Imperial family.

One day, a courier from M. de Rothschild arrived in Vienna; he brought great news, news which, in former times, would have been announced by comets and earthquakes: Napoleon had died on May 1821! The news reached Vienna on 22 July--the day on which, three years previously, the Duc de Reichstadt had lost his name; the day on which, eleven years later, he was to lose his life.

The Comte de Dietrichstein was absent, and the emperor charged M. Foresti with the telling of the fatal news to the young duke, who had just reached his tenth birthday. M. Foresti adored the prince; he had been with him since 1815. He broke the news with all kinds of circumlocution, but, at the first words he uttered, the prince said--

"My father is dead, is he not?"

"Monseigneur ..."

"He is dead?"

"Indeed, yes!"

"How could one want him to live ... over there!" exclaimed the child, bursting into tears.

Contrary to the custom of Imperial etiquette, he wore mourning for a year; he insisted on it when they tried to make him give it up. They appealed to the emperor, who replied--

"Leave it to the child's own heart."

If you wish to know in what fashion the news was officially announced to the Court of Vienna, see the original letter of Sir Hudson Lowe to Baron Sturmer--

"SAINT-HELENA, 27 _May_ 1821

"MONSIEUR LE BARON,--He is no more! A disease which, according to the opinion current in his family, was hereditary, carried him to the grave on the 5th of this month: tumour and cancer of the stomach near the pylorus. On opening the body, with the consent of the persons of his entourage, they discovered an ulcer close to the pylorus which caused adherence to the liver; and, on opening the stomach, they could trace the progress of the disease. The interior of the stomach was almost entirely a _mass of cancerous disease, or of scirrhous portions advancing the cancer._ His father died of the same disease at the age of thirty-six; it should have struck him down when he was on the throne of France at the hour fixed by fate, _according to his own way of thinking on the subject._ He was not confined to his room until 17 March; but a change had been noticeable in him since last November, an unusual pallor and a peculiar way of walking. He, however, took exercise twice a day, generally in a little carriage; but his paleness and weakness seemed always to persist.

"He was offered the advice of English doctors, but he would not receive any visit from them until 1 April, the month before his death. It was Professor Antomarchi who attended him before this period and continued to do so to his decease: it was he, too, who opened the body in the presence of nearly every doctor on the island. Dr. Arnott, of the 20th Regiment, a very clever and experienced man, was called in to see him on 1 April, and continued to attend him to the last. He has notified his gratitude to him by bequeathing him a gold snuff-box, the last he used, on which he engraved with his own hand the letter N. He has also left him a sum of money (five hundred pounds).

"Comte Montholon is the principal depositary of his last wishes; Comte Bertrand only came second.

"He had strongly urged Comte Bertrand to do his utmost to make peace with me, saving always his sense of honour: I was not even told of this. He made advances, and, as I have no rancour in my disposition (as far as a person can judge of himself), I did not repulse them.

"It was, however, all along more on account of the pretensions of the great marshal and his wounded pride, rather than those of the emperor, that caused matters to go wrong here from the very first; and from information received, it is evident that towards the end the emperor began to see this.

"There is a codicil to his will by which all the effects here are left to Comtes Bertrand and Montholon and to Marchand. Montholon is the principal executor. They knew nothing, or they said they knew nothing, of the will.

"In view of the time you spent here, I am induced to think that these few details will be specially interesting to you, and I will not make excuses for intruding them upon you. Give my compliments and those of Lady Lowe to Madame la baronne de Sturmer, and, believe me always, Your faithful and obedient Servant,

"H. LOWE, M.P."

"_P.S_.--Bonaparte had himself guessed the cause of his illness. Some time before his death, he desired that his body should be opened, in order, as he told Bertrand and Montholon, to discover if there were any means of saving his son from the malady.

"Excuse my scrawl.

"H. L."

Do you notice that, in no part of the letter is the name of the dead man used? It is only in the postscript that it falls from the pen of the herald of death.

Was it not because the gaoler was ashamed to pronounce the name of his captive; the executioner felt remorse in pronouncing the name of the sufferer? When Napoleon was dead the whole world turned its attention, which had been divided between Schönbrünn and Saint-Helena, solely towards Schönbrünn.