Chapter 27

Napoleon divorces Josephine--Marries the Archduchess Maria Louisa--Deposes Louis Buonaparte--Annexes Holland and the whole Coast of Germany to France--Revolution in Sweden--Bernadotte elected Crown Prince of Sweden--Progress of the War in the Peninsula--Battle of Busaco--Lord Wellington retreats to the Lines of Torres Vedras.

The treacherous invasion of Spain, and the imprisonment of the Pope, were but the first of a series of grand political errors, destined to sap the foundations of this apparently irresistible power. On his return to Paris, Napoleon proudly proclaimed to his senate, that no enemy opposed him throughout the continent of Europe--except only a few fugitive-bands of Spanish rebels, and "the English leopard"[60] in Portugal, whom ere long he would cause to be chased into the sea. In the meantime, the Pensinula was too insignificant an object to demand either his own presence, or much of their concern: the general welfare of the empire called on them to fix their attention on a subject of a very different nature; namely, the situation of the imperial family. "I and my house," said Napoleon, "will ever be found ready to sacrifice everything, even our own dearest ties and feeling, to the welfare of the French people."

This was the first public intimation of a measure which had for a considerable period occupied much of Napoleon's thoughts, and which, regarded at the time (almost universally) as the very master-stroke of his policy, proved in the issue no mean element of his ruin.

Josephine had loved Napoleon, and been beloved passionately by him in his youth. She had shared his humbler fortune; by her connections in Paris, and especially by her skilful conduct during his Egyptian expedition, and immediately afterwards, she had most materially assisted him in the attainment of the sovereign dignity: she had subsequently adorned his court, and gratified his pride, by the elegance of her manners, and won to herself the attachment of his people, by her sincere good nature and active benevolence. Her power over him was known to be great, and no one ever doubted but that it had uniformly been exerted on the side of mercy. She was considered as the good angel who, more frequently and effectually than any influence besides, interfered to soothe the fierce passions and temper the violent acts of her lord. Her devotion to him was perfect: she partook his labours as far as he would permit her to do so, submitted to all his caprices, and, with a dark presentiment that his ambition would one day cast her aside, continued to centre the whole of her existence in the contemplation of his glory.

Long before Napoleon assumed the imperial title, his hopes of offspring from this union were at an end; and, at least from the hour in which his authority was declared to be hereditary, Josephine must have begun to suspect that, in his case also, the ties of domestic life might be sacrificed to those views of political advantage, which had so often dissolved the marriages of princes. For a moment she seems to have flattered herself that Napoleon would be contented to adopt her son: and Eugene, as we have seen, was indeed announced, at the period of his alliance with the royal family of Bavaria, as the successor to the throne of Italy, in case his father-in-law should leave no second son to inherit it. Louis Buonaparte afterwards wedded Hortense de Beauharnois, and an infant son, the only pledge of their ill-assorted union, became so much the favourite of Napoleon, that Josephine, as well as others, regarded this boy as the heir of France. But the child died early; and the Emperor began to familiarise himself with the idea of dissolving his own marriage.

There is now no doubt that, as early as the conferences of Tilsit, the scheme of such a connection with the imperial family of Russia was broached; and as little that Alexander treated the proposal with coldness, in consequence of the insuperable aversion with which the empress-mother (a princess whose influence was always commanding) persisted in regarding the character of Buonaparte. At Erfurt this matter was once more touched upon; and a second rejection of his personal alliance was probably the chief of not a few incidents at that meeting, which satisfied Napoleon as to the uncertain condition of his relations with the Russian court. Then, however, he had abundant reasons for dissembling his displeasure: and the pretext of difficulties arising from difference of religion was permitted to pass.

Fouche was one of the first to penetrate the secret thoughts of Buonaparte: and he, with audacity equal to his cunning, ventured to take on himself the dangerous office of sounding the Empress as to this most delicate of all subjects. One evening, before Napoleon left Paris on his unhallowed expedition to Spain, the minister of police drew Josephine aside into a corner of her saloon, and, after a preface of abundant commonplaces, touching the necessities of the empire and the painful position of the Emperor, asked her in plain terms whether she were not capable of sacrificing all private feelings to these? Josephine heard him with at least the appearance of utter surprise, ordered him to quit her presence, and went immediately to demand of Napoleon whether the minister had had any authority for this proceeding. The Emperor answered in the negative, and with high demonstrations of displeasure: but when Josephine went on to ask the dismissal of Fouche, as the only fit punishment for so great an outrage, he refused to comply. He remained steadfast, in spite of the urgencies and lamentations of an insulted woman; and from that hour Josephine must have felt that her fate was fixed.

The apartments of Napoleon, and those of his wife, which were immediately over them, at the Tuileries, had communication by means of a private staircase; and it was the custom of the Emperor himself to signify, by a tap on the door of Josephine's sitting-room, his desire to converse with her in his cabinet below. In the days of their cordial union the signal was often made, most commonly in the evening, and it was not unusual for them to remain shut up together in conversation for hours. Soon after his return from Schoenbrunn, the ladies in attendance began to remark that the Emperor's knock was heard more frequently than it had ever used to be, that their mistress seemed to listen for it at certain hours with a new and painful anxiety, and that she did not obey the signal with her accustomed alacrity. One evening Napoleon surprised them by carrying Josephine into the midst of them, pale, apparently lifeless. She was but awaking from a long swoon into which she had fallen on hearing him at last pronounce the decree which terminated their connection.

This was on the 5th of December. On the 15th the Emperor summoned his council, and announced to them, that at the expense of all his personal feelings, he, devoted wholly to the welfare of the state, had resolved to separate himself from his most dear consort. Josephine then appeared among them, and, not without tears, expressed her acquiescence in the decree. The council, after haranguing the imperial spouses on the nobleness of their mutual sacrifice, accepted and ratified the dissolution of the marriage. The title of Empress was to continue with Josephine for life, and a pension of two millions of francs (to which Napoleon afterwards added a third million from his privy purse) was allotted to her. She retired from the Tuileries, residing thenceforth mostly at the villa of Malmaison; and in the course of a few weeks it was signified that Napoleon had demanded the hand of the Archduchess Maria Louisa, daughter to the Emperor Francis, the same youthful princess who has been mentioned as remaining in Vienna, on account of illness, during the second occupation of that capital.

Having given her hand, at Vienna, to Berthier, who had the honour to represent the person of his master, the young archduchess came into France in March, 1810. On the 28th, as her carriage was proceeding towards Soissons, Napoleon rode up to it, in a plain dress, altogether unattended; and, at once breaking through all the etiquettes of such occasions, introduced himself to his bride. She had never seen his person till then, and it is said that her first exclamation was, "Your majesty's pictures have not done you justice." Buonaparte was at this time forty years of age; his countenance had acquired a certain fulness, and that statue-like calmness of expression with which posterity will always be familiar; but his figure betrayed as yet nothing more than a tendency towards corpulence. He was considered as a handsomer man at this period than he had been in her earlier days. They spent the evening at the chateau of Compiegne, and were remarried, on the 2nd of April, at Paris, amidst every circumstance of splendour. Among other imperial gallantries, Napoleon had provided a set of apartments at the Tuileries in which, down to the minutest article of furniture, Maria-Louisa found a facsimile of those which she had been accustomed to occupy in her father's palace of Schoenbrunn. For some time he seemed to devote himself, like a mere lover, to the society of his new partner; and was really, according to his own account at St. Helena, enchanted with the contrast which her youthful simplicity of character and manners presented to the finished and elaborate graces of Josephine. Of the uniform attachment and affection of both his wives, he spoke afterwards with equal praises. But he in vain endeavoured to prevail on Maria-Louisa to make a personal acquaintance with her predecessor; and, at length, found it necessary to give up his own visits to Malmaison, which for a time were not unfrequent.

Napoleon, in his exile, said that "the Spanish ulcer" and the Austrian match were the two main causes of his ruin;--and they both contributed to it largely, though by no means equally. His alliance with the haughtiest of the old sovereign houses gave deep offence indeed to that great party in France, who, though willing to submit to a Dictator, still loathed the name of hereditary monarchy. Nothing, perhaps, could have shocked those men more grievously than to see the victorious heir and representative of their revolution seeking to mix his blood with that of its inveterate enemies, and making himself free, as it were, of what they had been accustomed to call the old-established "corporation of tyrants." Another, and, it is to be hoped, as large a class of his subjects, were disgusted with his abandonment of the wife of his youth, for the sake of gratifying his vanity and ambition. There were also, we may easily believe, not a few royalists of the old school who had hitherto acquiesced in his sway the more easily, because he seemed destined to die childless, and in a contest for the throne of France, they flattered themselves the legitimate heir of the monarchy might outweigh any of his remoter kindred. And, lastly, it is not improvable that some of Napoleon's marshals had accustomed themselves to dream of events such as occurred on the death of Alexander the Great. But making all allowance for these exceptions, it is hardly possible to doubt that a vast proportion of the upper classes of society in France must have been disposed to hail the Emperor's alliance with the house of Austria, as a pledge of his desire to adopt, henceforth, a more moderate line of policy as to his foreign relations; or that his throne must have been strengthened in the eyes of the nation at large by the prospect--soon realised--of a son of his own blood to fill it after him. Napoleon's own opinion was, that the error lay, not in seeking a bride of imperial birth, but in choosing her at Vienna. Had he persisted in his demands, the Czar, he doubted not, would have granted him his sister; the proud dreams of Tilsit would have been realised, and Paris and St. Petersburg become the only two capitals of Europe.

The Emperor's new marriage was speedily followed by another event, which showed how little the ordinary ties and feelings of domestic life now weighed with him in the scale against ambition. His brother Louis, a weak, but benevolent man, had in vain been cautioned by Napoleon, on his promotion to the Dutch throne, that, in his administration of this subaltern monarchy, "the first object of his care must ever be _the Emperor_, the second _France_, and the third _Holland_." Louis, surrounded by native ministers, men of great talents and experience, and enlightened lovers of their country, had his sympathies ere long enlisted on the side of those whom he might be pardoned for wishing to consider as really his subjects. His queen, on the other hand, the daughter of Josephine, and the favourite of Napoleon, made her court, as far as she could, a French one, and was popularly regarded as heading the party who looked in all things to the Tuileries. The meek-spirited Louis, thwarted by this intriguing woman, and grossly insulted by his brother, struggled for some time with the difficulties of his situation; but his patience availed nothing: his supposed connivance at the violations of the Berlin and Milan decrees, in the same proportion as it tended to raise him more and more in the affections of the Dutch, fixed and heightened the displeasure of Napoleon. He was at length summoned to Paris, and without a moment's hesitation obeyed. On arriving there he took up his residence in the house of his mother, and next morning found himself a prisoner. Having abdicated his throne, Louis retired to Gratz, in Styria, and to that private mode of life for which his character fitted him: his name continues to be affectionately remembered in Holland. His beautiful wife, despite the fall of her mother, chose to fix her residence in Paris, where she once more shone the brightest ornament of the court. On the 9th of July, 1810, the kingdom of Holland was formally annexed to the French empire; Amsterdam taking rank among the cities next after Rome.

In pursuance of the same stern resolution to allow no consideration to interfere with the complete and effectual establishment of the "continental system," Buonaparte shortly afterwards annexed the Hanse towns, Oldenburg, and the whole sea-coast of Germany, from the frontier of Holland to that of Denmark, to the French empire. The King of Prussia was as yet in no condition to remonstrate against this new act of rapacity: opposition from any other German state was wholly out of the question.

In truth there had been, for several years, but one power in the North of Europe at once decidedly adverse in spirit, and in any degree independent; and now, to all appearance, this last exception also was removed. Gustavus IV., King of Sweden, had persisted in his original hatred of the French Revolution, and of Buonaparte, in opposition to a powerful party in that country, who considered the conduct of their sovereign, in standing out against so gigantic an enemy, as mere obstinacy--in fact as insane. In consequence of his pertinacious refusal to submit to the supreme will of Napoleon, the Pomeranian provinces and Finland had been lost to the kingdom. The monarch's personal behaviour unfortunately was so extravagant as to furnish some grounds for suspecting him of mental aberration. He was arrested in his palace, and, an act of abdication for himself and his children being extorted, deposed: his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was called to the throne in his room, as Charles XIII.; and, amicable relations being soon established between the Courts of Stockholm and the Tuileries, Pomerania was restored, and the English flag and commerce banished from the ports of Sweden in December, 1809.

In May, 1810, the Prince of Augustenburg, who had been recognised as heir to Charles XIII., died suddenly: and the choice of a successor was, according to the Constitution of Sweden, to depend on the vote of the Diet, which assembled accordingly as Orebro, in the month of August following.

The royal house (except the immediate line of the deposed king) being extinct, many candidates were proposed; and among others the King of Denmark and Norway, upon whom, in true policy, the choice should have fallen, as in that case a state capable of balancing the power of Russia on the Baltic might have been consolidated. But the eyes of men were turned almost exclusively at this time to Napoleon; and in the hope of securing his friendship and protection, the succession was at last proposed to Marshal Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte Corvo, and brother-in-law to Joseph Buonaparte, as married to that Mademoiselle Clery, who in early days had received Napoleon's own addresses. The Marshal had gained goodwill by his moderation and justice, when entrusted with the government of Hanover and Swedish Pomerania, after these countries fell into the hands of the French in consequence of the campaign of 1806-7. His military reputation was high; there was no stain on his private character: and there was one circumstance especially in his favour, that he had been bred a Protestant, and might therefore be expected to conform, without scruple, to the established church of Sweden. But the chief recommendation was, without doubt, the belief of the Swedish Diet that Bernadotte stood in the first rank of Napoleon's favour.

Napoleon, however, had never forgiven Bernadotte for his refusal to act on his side on the 18th Brumaire. He thenceforth considered this great soldier of the Republic as one who might serve the Emperor well, because in doing so he served France, but who looked to himself with none of those feelings of personal devotion which could alone entitle a subject to his favour. Bernadotte had been distinguished in the army before Napoleon himself appeared on the great theatre of events; he could never be classed with those who had earned all their distinction and pre-eminence under the banners of the Emperor; he had an existence separate and his own; he had stood aloof at the great and decisive crisis of Napoleon's fate; he might be entrusted and employed afterwards--he could never be loved. The proposal of the Diet, therefore, was the reverse of agreeable to him whose favour it was expressly designed to conciliate. Bernadotte, however, was powerful in the esteem of a great party in the French army, as well as among the old republicans of the state: to have interfered against him would have been to kindle high wrath and hatred among all those officers who belonged to the ante-Buonapartean period; and, on the other hand, to oppose the free-will of the Swedes would have appeared extraordinary conduct indeed on the part of a sovereign who studiously represented himself as owing everything to the free-will of the French. Sweden, finally, was still an independent state; and the events of the Peninsula were likely to impress the Emperor with a lively sense of the dangers of exciting a spirit of national aversion at the other extremity of Europe. Napoleon consented to the acceptance of the proffered dignity by Bernadotte. The Marshal was called on to sign a declaration, before he left Paris, that he would never bear arms against France. He rejected this condition as incompatible with the connexion which Napoleon himself had just sanctioned him in forming with another state, and said he was sure the suggestion came not from the Emperor, who knew what were the duties of a sovereign, but from some lawyer. Napoleon frowned darkly, and answered with an air of embarrassment, "Go; our destinies are about to be fulfilled." Bernadotte said he had not heard his words distinctly: Napoleon repeated them; and they parted. Bernadotte was received with an enthusiastic welcome in Stockholm; and, notwithstanding the unpleasant circumstances under which Napoleon had dismissed him, the French alliance continued to be maintained. The private history of the transaction was not likely to be divulged at the time; and the natural as well as universal notion was, that Sweden, governed in effect by Marshal Bernadotte as crown prince, had become almost as mere a dependence of France as Naples under King Joachim Murat, or Westphalia under King Jerome Buonaparte.

The war, meanwhile, continued without interruption in the Peninsula; whither, but for his marriage, Napoleon would certainly have repaired in person after the peace of Schoenbrunn left him at ease on his German frontier. Although the new alliance had charms enough to detain him in France, it by no means withdrew his attention from the state of that fair kingdom which still mocked Joseph with the shadow of a crown. In the open field, indeed, the French appeared everywhere triumphant, except only where the British force from Portugal interfered, and in almost every district of Spain the fortresses were in their hands; yet the spirit of the people remained wholly unsubdued. The invaders could not count an inch of soil their own beyond their outposts. Their troops continued to be harassed and thinned by the indomitable _guerillas_ or partisan companies; and, even in the immediate neighbourhood of their strongest garrisons, the people assembled to vote for representatives in the Cortes, which had at last been summoned to meet in Cadiz, there to settle the national government, during the King's absence, on a regular footing.

The battle of Ocana left the central part of Spain wholly undefended; and Soult, Victor and Mortier, forcing the passes of the Sierra Morena, made themselves masters, early in the year of Jaen, Cordova, Grenada, Malaga, and Seville itself. Cadiz, to which the Central Junta had ere this retired, was now garrisoned by a large Spanish force, including the army of Estremadura, under the Duke D'Albuquerque, and a considerable detachment of English troops from Gibraltar; and Soult sat down before the place in form. Could he have taken Cadiz, no fortress of importance would have remained with the patriots in the south of Spain: but the strength of the situation and the ready access to the sea and Gibraltar, rendered all his efforts vain.

On the eastern side of Spain Suchet defeated the Spanish General O'Donnell under the walls of Ostalric; and took afterwards that town, Lerida, Mequineza, and Tortosa. But Valencia once more repelled the invaders. After a bloody sally of the inhabitants Suchet withdrew from before the walls.

It was on the Portuguese side, however, that the events of most importance occurred. It was there that the disgraces of Vimiero and Talaveyra must be avenged; and there accordingly Napoleon had directed his chief force to be set in motion. Massena (Prince of Essling), second only to himself in reputation, took the command, early in the season, of "the army of Portugal," at least 100,000 strong, and whose commission it was to drive the English _leopards_, and the _Seapoy General_ (as, ignorant of the future, Buonaparte at this time called Wellington) into the sea. To this gigantic army that leader could oppose at most 20,000 British troops; but 30,000 Portuguese had by this time been so well trained by General Beresford, that they were held not unworthy of fighting by the side of Englishmen. Still Lord Wellington's whole force was barely half that of Massena: and his operations were necessarily confined to the defensive. He had no means to prevent the French Marshal from taking Oviedo and Ciudad Rodrigo--almost in his sight; but commenced his retreat, and conducted it with a coolness and precision which not a little disconcerted the pursuers. They at length ventured to attack the English on their march. On the 27th September, 1810, they charged in five columns, on the heights of Busaco, and were driven back with such terrible carnage that no further assault was threatened. Massena kept advancing, step by step, as Wellington withdrew, not doubting that his enemy would embark as soon as he reached Lisbon, and leave him in quiet possession of that capital and the rich country around. His surprise was great when Lord Wellington at last halted on the lines of the Torres Vedras, which had by this time been so strengthened, that even in inferior hands they might have been considered impregnable.

This formidable position, extending about twelve leagues between the sea and the Tagus, placed the port of Lisbon and the adjacent territory in the secure possession of the English general. Massena might flatter his master with the announcement that he was besieging Lisbon; but in reality his own army very soon suffered all the inconveniences and privations of a besieged garrison. The country around him had been laid waste: every Portuguese peasant was a deadly enemy. To advance was impossible, and there was infinite difficulty in keeping his communications open behind. Thus, during many months, the two armies lay face to face in inaction.

[Footnote 60: The leopards had been changed into lions in the English shield five hundred years before this! To such small matters could Buonaparte's rancour stoop.]