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The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise

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THE HAPPY DAYS

OF

THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE

BY

IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND

_TRANSLATED BY_ THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY

_ILLUSTRATED_




CONTENTS.


INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER

I. EARLY YEARS

II. 1809

III. THE PRELIMINARIES OP THE WEDDING

IV. THE BETROTHAL

V. THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY

VI. THE AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY

VII. THE WEDDING AT VIENNA

VIII. THE DEPARTURE

IX. THE TRANSFER

X. THE JOURNEY

XI. COMPIÈGNE

XII. THE CIVIL WEDDING

XIII. THE ENTRANCE INTO PARIS

XIV. THE RELIGIOUS CEREMONY

XV. THE HONEYMOON

XVI. THE TRIP IN THE NORTH

XVII. THE MONTH OF JUNE, 1810

XVIII. THE BALL AT THE AUSTRIAN EMBASSY

XIX. THE BIRTH OF THE KING OF ROME

XX. THE RECOVERY

XXI. THE BAPTISM

XXII. SAINT CLOUD AND TRIANON

XXIII. THE TRIP TO HOLLAND

XXIV. NAPOLEON AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS POWER

XXV. MARIE LOUISE IN 1812

XXVI. THE EMPRESS'S HOUSEHOLD

XXVII. DRESDEN

XXVIII. PRAGUE




THE HAPPY DAYS

OF

THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE

INTRODUCTION.

In 1814, while Napoleon was banished in the island of Elba, the Empress
Marie Louise and her grandmother, Marie Caroline, Queen of Naples,
happened to meet at Vienna. The one, who had been deprived of the French
crown, was seeking to be put in possession of her new realm, the Duchy
of Parma; the other, who had fled from Sicily to escape the yoke of her
pretended protectors, the English, had come to demand the restitution of
her kingdom of Naples, where Murat continued to rule with the connivance
of Austria. This Queen, Marie Caroline, the daughter of the great
Empress, Maria Theresa, and the sister of the unfortunate Marie
Antoinette, had passed her life in detestation of the French Revolution
and of Napoleon, of whom she had been one of the most eminent victims.
Well, at the very moment when the Austrian court was doing its best to
make Marie Louise forget that she was Napoleon's wife and to separate
her from him forever, Marie Caroline was pained to see her granddaughter
lend too ready an ear to their suggestions. She said to the Baron de
Méneval, who had accompanied Marie Louise to Vienna: "I have had, in my
time, very good cause for complaining of your Emperor; he has persecuted
me and wounded my pride,--I was then at least fifteen years old,--but
now I remember only one thing,--that he is unfortunate." Then she went
on to say that if they tried to keep husband and wife apart, Marie
Louise would have to tie her bedclothes to her window and run away in
disguise. "That," she exclaimed, "that's what I should do in her place;
for when people are married, they are married for their whole life!"

If a woman like Queen Marie Caroline, a sister of Marie Antoinette, a
queen driven from her throne by Napoleon, could feel in this way, it is
easy to understand the severity with which those of the French who were
devoted to the Emperor, regarded the conduct of his ungrateful wife. In
the same way, Josephine, in spite of her occasionally frivolous conduct,
has retained her popularity, because she was tender, kind, and devoted,
even after she was divorced; while Marie Louise has been criticised,
because after loving, or saying that she loved, the mighty Emperor, she
deserted him when he was a prisoner. The contrast between her conduct
and that of the wife of King Jerome, the noble and courageous Catherine
of Wurtemberg, who endured every danger, and all sorts of
persecutions, to share her husband's exile and poverty, has set in an
even clearer light the faults of Marie Louise. She has been blamed for
not having joined Napoleon at Elba, for not having even tried to temper
his sufferings at Saint Helena, for not consoling him in any way, for
not even writing to him. The former Empress of the French has been also
more severely condemned for her two morganatic marriages,--one with
Count Neipperg, an Austrian general and a bitter enemy of Napoleon, the
other with Count de Bombelles, a Frenchman who left France to enter the
Austrian service. Certainly Marie Louise was neither a model wife nor a
model widow, and there is nothing surprising in the severity with which
her contemporaries judged her, a severity which doubtless history will
not modify. But if this princess was guilty, more than one attenuating
circumstance may be urged in her defence, and we should, in justice,
remember that it was not without a struggle, without tears, distress,
and many conscientious scruples, that she decided to obey her
father's rigid orders and become again what she had been before her
marriage,--simply an Austrian princess.

It must not be forgotten that the Empress Marie Louise, who was in two
ways the grandniece of Queen Marie Antoinette, through her mother Maria
Theresa of Naples, daughter of Queen Marie Caroline, and through her
father the Emperor Francis, son of the Emperor Leopold II., the
brother of the martyred queen, had been brought up to abhor the French
Revolution and the Empire which succeeded it. She had been taught from
the moment she left the cradle, that France was the hereditary enemy,
the savage and implacable foe, of her country. When she was a child,
Napoleon appeared to her against a background of blood, like a fatal
being, an evil genius, a satanic Corsican, a sort of Antichrist. The few
Frenchmen whom she saw at the Austrian court were émigrés, who saw in
Napoleon nothing but the selfish revolutionist, the friend of the young
Robespierre, the creature of Barras, the defender of the members of the
Convention, the man of the 13th of Vendémiaire, the murderer of the Duke
of Enghien, the enemy of all the thrones of Europe, the author of the
treachery of Bayonne, the persecutor of the Pope, the excommunicated
sovereign. Twice he had driven Austria to the brink of ruin, and it had
even been said that he wished to destroy it altogether, like a second
Poland. The young archduchess had never heard the hero of Austerlitz
and Wagram spoken of, except in terms inspired by resentment, fear,
and hatred. Could she, then, in a single day learn to love the man who
always had been held up before her as a second Attila, as the scourge of
God? Hence, when she came to contemplate the possibility of her marriage
with him, she was overwhelmed with surprise, terror, and repulsion, and
her first idea was to regard herself as a victim to be sacrificed to
a vague Minotaur. We find this word "sacrifice" on the lips of the
Austrian statesmen who most warmly favored the French alliance, even of
those who had counselled and arranged the match. The Austrian ambassador
in Paris, the Prince of Swartzenberg, wrote to Metternich, February 8,
1810, "I pity the princess; but let her remember that it is a fine thing
to bring peace to such good people!" And Metternich wrote back, February
15, to the Prince of Swartzenberg, "The Archduchess Marie Louise sees
in the suggestion made to her by her August father, that Napoleon may
include her in his plans, only a means of proving to her beloved father
the most absolute devotion. She feels the full force of the sacrifice,
but her filial love will outweigh all other considerations." Having been
brought up in the habit of severe discipline and passive obedience, she
belonged to a family in which the Austrian princesses are regarded as
the docile instruments of the greatness of the Hapsburgs. Consequently,
she resigned herself to following her father's wishes without a murmur,
but not without sadness. What Marie Louise thought at the time of her
marriage she still thought in the last years of her life. General de
Trobriand, the Frenchman who won distinction on the northern side in the
American civil war, told me recently how painfully surprised he was when
once at Venice he had heard Napoleon's widow, then the wife of Count de
Bombelles, say, in speaking of her marriage to the great Emperor, "I was
sacrificed."

Austria was covered with ruins, its hospitals were crowded with wounded
French and Austrians, and in the ears of Viennese still echoed the
cannon of Wagram, when salvos of artillery announced not war, but this
marriage. The memories of an obstinate struggle, which both sides had
regarded as one for life or death, was still too recent, too terrible to
permit a complete reconciliation between the two nations. In fact, the
peace was only a truce. To facilitate the formal entry of Napoleon's
ambassador into Vienna, it had been necessary hastily to build a bridge
over the ruins of the walls which the French had blown up a few months
earlier, as a farewell to the inhabitants. Marie Louise, who started
with tears in her eyes, trembled as she drew near the French territory,
which Marie Antoinette had found so fatal.

Soon this first impression wore off, and the young Empress was
distinctly flattered by the amazing splendor of her throne, the most
powerful in the world. And yet amid this Babylonian pomp, and all the
splendor, the glory, the flattery, which could gratify a woman's heart,
she did not cease to think of her own country. One day when she was
standing at a window of the palace of Saint Cloud, gazing thoughtfully
at the view before her, M. de Méneval ventured to ask the cause of the
deep revery in which she appeared to be sunk. She answered that as she
was looking at the beautiful view, she was surprised to find herself
regretting the neighborhood of Vienna, and wishing that some magic wand
might let her see even a corner of it. At that time Marie Louise was
afraid that she would never see her country again, and she sighed. What
glory or greatness can wipe out the touching memories of infancy?

Doubtless Napoleon treated his wife with the utmost regard and
consideration; but in the affection with which he inspired her there
was, we fancy, more admiration than tenderness. He was too great for
her. She was fascinated, but troubled by so great power and so great
genius. She had the eyes of a dove, and she needed the eyes of an eagle,
to be able to look at the Imperial Sun, of which the hot rays dazzled
her. She would have preferred less glory, less majesty, fewer triumphs,
with her simple and modest tastes, which were rather those of a
respectable citizen's wife than of a queen. Her husband, amid his
courtiers, who flocked about him as priests flock about an idol, seemed
to her a demi-god rather than a man, and she would far rather have been
won by affection than overwhelmed by his superiority.

It is not to be supposed, however, that Marie Louise was unhappy before
the catastrophes that accompanied the fall of the Empire. It was in
perfect sincerity that she wrote to her father in praise of her husband,
and her joy was great when she gave birth to a child, who seemed a
pledge of peace and of general happiness. Let us add that the Emperor
never had an occasion to find fault with her. Her gentleness, reserve,
and obedience formed the combination of qualities which her husband
desired. He had never imagined an Empress more exactly to his taste.
When she deserted him, he was more ready to excuse and pity her than to
cast blame upon her. He looked upon her as the slave and victim of the
Viennese court. Moreover, he was in perfect ignorance of her love for
the Count of Neipperg, and no shadow of jealousy tormented him at Saint
Helena. "You may be sure," he said a few days before his death, "that if
the Empress makes no effort to ease my woes, it is because she is kept
surrounded by spies, who never let my sufferings come to her ears; for
Marie Louise is virtue itself." A pleasant delusion, which consoled the
final moments of the great man, whose last thoughts were for his wife
and son.

We fancy that the Emperor of Austria was sincere in the protestations
of affection and friendship which he made to Napoleon shortly after the
wedding. He then entertained no thoughts of dethroning or fighting him.
He had hopes of securing great advantage from the French alliance, and
he would have been much surprised if any one had foretold to him how
soon he would become one of the most active agents in the overthrow of
this son-in-law to whom he expressed such affectionate feelings. In 1811
he was sincerely desirous that the King of Rome should one day succeed
Napoleon on the throne of the vast empire. At that time hatred of France
had almost died out in Austria; it was only renewed by the disastrous
Russian campaign. The Austrians, who could not wholly forget the past,
did not love Napoleon well enough to remain faithful to him in
disaster. Had he been fortunate, the hero of Wagram would have preserved
his father-in-law's sympathy and the Austrian alliance; but being
unfortunate, he lost both at once. Unlike the rulers of the old
dynasties, he was condemned either to perpetual victory or to ruin. He
needed triumphs instead of ancestors, and the slightest loss of glory
was for him the token of irremediable decay; incessant victory was the
only condition on which he could keep his throne, his wife, his son,
himself. One day he asked Marie Louise what instructions she had
received from her parents in regard to her conduct towards him. "To be
wholly yours," she answered, "and to obey you in everything." Might she
not have added, "So long as you are not unfortunate"?

But who at the beginning of that fatal year, 1812, could have foretold
the catastrophes which were so near? When Marie Louise was with Napoleon
at Dresden, did he not appear to her like the arbiter of the world,
an invincible hero, an Agamemnon, the king of kings? Never before,
possibly, had a man risen so high. Sovereigns seemed lost amid the crowd
of courtiers. Among the aides-de-camp was the Crown Prince of Prussia,
who was obliged to make special recommendations to those near him to pay
a little attention to his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria. What
power, what pride, what faith in his star, when, drawing all Europe
after him, he bade farewell to his wife May 29, 1812, to begin that
gigantic war which he thought was destined to consolidate all his
greatness and to crown all his glories! But he had not counted on the
burning of Moscow: there is in the air a zone which the highest balloons
cannot pierce; once there, ascent means death. This zone, which exists
also in power, good fortune, glory, as well as in the atmosphere,
Napoleon had reached. At the height of his prosperity he had forgotten
that God was about to say to him: Thou shalt go no further.

At the first defeat Marie Louise perceived that the brazen statue had
feet of clay. Malet's conspiracy filled her with gloomy thoughts. It
became evident that the Empire was not a fixed institution, but a single
man; in case this man died or lived defeated, everything was gone.
December 12, 1812, the Empress went to her bed in the Tuileries, sad and
ill. It was half-past eleven in the evening. The lady-in-waiting, who
was to pass the night in a neighboring room, was about to lock all the
doors when suddenly she heard voices in the drawing-room close by. Who
could have come at that hour? Who except the Emperor? And, in fact, it
was he, who, without word to any one, had just arrived unexpectedly in a
wretched carriage, and had found great difficulty in getting the palace
doors opened. He had travelled incognito from the Beresina, like a
fugitive, like a criminal. As he passed through Warsaw he had exclaimed
bitterly and in amazement at his defeat, "There is but one step from the
sublime to the ridiculous." When he burst into his wife's bedroom in his
long fur coat, Marie Louise could not believe her eyes. He kissed her
affectionately, and promised her that all the disasters recounted in the
twenty-ninth bulletin should be soon repaired; he added that he had been
beaten, not by the Russians, but by the elements. Nevertheless, the
decadence had begun; his glory was dimmed; Marie Louise began to have
doubts of Napoleon. His courtiers continued to flatter him, but they
ceased to worship him. A dark cloud lay over the Tuileries. The Empress
had but a few days to pass with her husband. He had been away for nearly
six months, from May 29 till December 12, 1812, and he was to leave
again April 15, 1813, to return only November 9. The European sovereigns
could not have continued in alliance with him even if they had wished
it, so irresistible was the movement of their subjects against him.
After Leipsic everything was lost; that was the signal of the death
struggle, which was to be long, terrible, and full of anguish. Europe
listened in terror to the cries of the dying Empire. But it was all
over. The sacred soil of France was invaded. January 25, 1814, at three
in the morning, the hero left the Tuileries to oppose the invaders. He
kissed his wife and his son for the last time. He was never to see them
again. In all, Napoleon had passed only two years and eight months with
Marie Louise; she had had hardly time enough to become attached to him.
Napoleon's sword was broken; he arrived before Paris too late to save
the city, which had just capitulated, and the foreigners were about to
make their triumphal entrance. Could a woman of twenty-two be strong
enough to withstand the tempest? Would she be brave enough, could she
indeed remain in Paris without disobeying Napoleon? Was not flight a
duty for the hapless sovereign? The Emperor had written to his brother,
King Joseph: "In no case must you let the Empress and the King of Rome
fall into the enemy's hands. Do not abandon my son, and remember that
I had rather see him in the Seine than in the hands of the enemies of
France. The lot of Astyanax, a prisoner among the Greeks, has always
seemed to me the unhappiest in history." But, alas! in spite of the
great Emperor's precautions, the King of Rome was condemned by fate
to be the modern Astyanax, and Marie Louise was not as constant as
Andromache.

The allied forces drew near, and there was no more time for flight.
March 29, 1814, horses and carriages had been stationed in the Carrousel
since the morning. At seven o'clock Marie Louise was dressed and ready
to leave, but they could not abandon hope; they wished still to await
some possible bit of good news which should prevent their leaving,--an
envoy from Napoleon, a messenger from King Joseph. The officers of the
National Guard were anxious to have the Empress stay. "Remain," they
urged; "we swear to defend you." Marie Louise thanked them through her
tears, but the Emperor's orders were positive; on no account were the
Empress and the King of Rome to fall into the enemy's hands. The peril
grew. Ever since four o'clock Marie Louise had kept putting off the
moment of leaving, in expectation that something would turn up. Eleven
struck, and the Minister of War came, declaring there was not a moment
to lose. One would have thought that the little King of Rome, who was
just three years old, knew that he was about to go, never to return.
"Don't go to Rambouillet," he cried to his mother; "that's a gloomy
castle; let us stay here." And he clung to the banisters, struggling
with the equerry who was carrying him, weeping and shouting, "I don't
want to leave my house; I don't want to go away; since papa is away, I
am the master." Marie Louise was impressed by this childish opposition;
a secret voice told her that her son was right; that by abandoning the
capital, they surrendered it to the Royalists. But the lot was cast, and
they had to leave. A mere handful of indifferent spectators, attracted
by no other feeling than curiosity, watched the flight of the sovereign
who, four years before, had made her formal entrance into this same
palace of the Tuileries under a triumphal arch, amid noisy acclamations.
There was not a tear in the eyes of the few spectators; they uttered no
sound, they made no movement of sympathy or regret; there was only a
sullen silence. But one person wept, and that was Marie Louise. When she
had reached the Champs Elyseés, she cast a last sad glance at the palace
she was never to see again. It was not a flight, but a funeral.

The Empress and the King of Rome took refuge at Blois, where there
appeared a faint shadow of Imperial government. On Good Friday, April
8, Count Shouvaloff reached Blois with a detachment of Cossacks, and
carried Marie Louise and her son to Rambouillet, where the Emperor of
Austria was to join them. What Napoleon had feared was soon realized.

April 16, the Emperor of Austria was at Blois. Marie Louise, who two
years before had left her father, starting on her triumphal journey to
Prague, amid all form of splendor and devotion, was much moved at seeing
him again, and placed the King of Rome in his arms, as if to reproach
him for deserting the child's cause. The grandfather relented, but the
monarch was stern: did he not soon say to Marie Louise: "As my daughter,
everything that I have is yours, even my blood and my life; as a
sovereign, I do not know you"? The Russian sentinels at the entrance
of the castle of Rambouillet were relieved by Austrian grenadiers. The
Empress of the French changed captors; she was the prisoner no longer of
the Czar's soldiers, but of her own father. Her conjugal affection was
not yet wholly extinct, and she reproached herself with not having
joined Napoleon at Fontainebleau; but her scruples were soon allayed by
the promise that she should soon see her husband again at Elba. She was
told that the treaty which had just been signed gave her, and after her,
her son, the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla; that the King of
Rome was henceforth the hereditary Duke of Parma; that if she had duties
as a wife, she also had duties as a mother; that she ought to gain the
good-will of the powers, and assure her child's future. They added that
she ought to give her husband time to establish himself at Elba, and
that meanwhile she would find in Vienna, near her loving parents, a few
weeks of moral and physical rest, which must be very necessary after so
many emotions and sufferings. Marie Louise, who had been brought up to
give her father strict obedience, regarded the advice of the Emperor of
Austria as commands which were not to be questioned, and April 23 she
left Rambouillet with her son for Vienna.

Did the dethroned Empress carry away with her a pleasant memory of
France and the French people? We do not think so; and, to be frank,
was what had just happened likely to give her a favorable idea of the
country she was leaving? Could she have much love for the people who
were fastening a rope to pull down the statue of the hero of Austerlitz
from its pedestal, the Vendôme column? When her father, the Emperor
Francis I., had been defeated, driven from his capital, overwhelmed with
the blows of fate, his misfortunes had only augmented his popularity;
the more he suffered, the more he was loved. But for Napoleon, who was
so adored in the day of triumph, how was he treated in adversity? What
was the language of the Senate, lately so obsequious and servile? The
men on whom the Emperor had literally showered favors, called him
contemptuously Monsieur de Bonaparte. What did they do to save the crown
of the King of Rome, whose cradle they had saluted with such noisy
acclamations? Were not the Cossacks who went to Blois after the Empress
rapturously applauded by the French, in Paris itself, upon the very
boulevards? Did not the marshals of the Empire now serve as an escort
to Louis XVIII.? Where were the eagles, the flags, and the tricolored
cockades? When Napoleon was passing through Provence on his way to take
possession of his ridiculous realm of Elba, he was compelled to wear an
Austrian officer's uniform to escape being put to death by Frenchmen;
the imperial mantle was exchanged for a disguise. It is true that Marie
Louise abandoned the French; but did not the French abandon her and her
son after the abdication of Fontainebleau; and if this child did not
become Napoleon II., is not the fault theirs? And did she not do
all that could be demanded of her as regent? Can she be accused of
intriguing with the Allies; and if at the last moment she left Paris,
was it not in obedience to her husband's express command? She might well
have said what fifty-six years later the second Emperor said so sadly
when he was a prisoner in Germany: "In France one must never be
unfortunate." What was then left for her to do in that volcano, that
land which swallows all greatness and glory, amid that fickle people
who change their opinions and passions as an actress changes her dress?
Where Napoleon, with all his genius, had made a complete failure, could
a young, ignorant woman be reasonably expected to succeed in the face of
all Europe? Were her hands strong enough to rebuild the colossal edifice
that lay in ruins upon the ground?

Such were the reflections of Marie Louise as she was leaving France. The
moment she touched German soil, all the ideas, impressions, feelings of
her girlhood, came back to her, and naturally enough; for were there not
many instances in the last war, of German women, married to Frenchmen,
who rejoiced in the German successes, and of French women, married to
Germans, who deplored them? Marriage is but an incident; one's nature is
determined at one's birth. In Austria, Marie Louise found again the same
sympathy and affection that she had left there. There was a sort of
conspiracy to make her forget France and love Germany. The Emperor
Francis persuaded her that he was her sole protector, and controlled her
with the twofold authority of a father and a sovereign. She who a few
days before had been the Empress of the French, the Queen of Italy, the
Regent of a vast empire, was in her father's presence merely a humble
and docile daughter, who told him everything, obeyed him in everything,
who abdicated her own free will, and promised, even swore, to entertain
no other ideas or wishes than such as agreed with his.

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