Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History BookOpen Original Text ss of Baden_, Stephanie Beauharnais. (For her marriage, see
note, end of Series F.)
_Hortense_ was by no means happy with her husband at the best of
times, and she cordially hated Holland. She was said to be very
frightened of Napoleon, but (like most people) could easily influence
her mother. Napoleon's letter to her of this date (October 5th) is
certainly not a severe one:--"I have received yours of September 14th.
I am sending to the Chief Justice in order to accord pardon to the
individual in whom you are interested. Your news always gives me
pleasure. I trust you will keep well, and never doubt my great
friendship for you."
_The Grand Duke_, _i.e._ of Wuerzburg. The castle where Napoleon
was staying seemed to him sufficiently strong to be armed and
provisioned, and he made a great depot in the city. "Volumes," says
Meneval, "would not suffice to describe the multitude of his
military and administrative measures here, and the precautions which
he took against even the most improbable hazards of war."
_Florence._--Probably September 1796, when Napoleon was hard pressed,
and Josephine had to fetch a compass from Verona to regain Milan, and
thus evade Wurmser's troops.
No. 2.
_Bamberg._--Arriving at Bamberg on the 6th, Napoleon issued a
proclamation to his army which concluded--"Let the Prussian army
experience the same fate that it experienced fourteen years ago. Let
it learn that, if it is easy to acquire increase of territory and
power by means of the friendship of the great people, their enmity,
which can be provoked only by the abandonment of all spirit of wisdom
and sense, is more terrible than the tempests of the ocean."
_Eugene._--Napoleon wrote him on the 5th, and twice on the 7th, on
which date we have _eighteen_ letters in the _Correspondence_.
_Her husband._--The Hereditary Grand Duke of Baden, to whom Napoleon
had written from Mayence on September 30th, accepting his services,
and fixing the rendezvous at Bamberg for October 4th or 5th.
On this day Napoleon invaded Prussian territory by entering Bayreuth,
having preceded by one day the date of their ultimatum--a rhapsody of
twenty pages, which Napoleon in his First Bulletin compares to "one of
those which the English Cabinet pay their literary men L500 per annum
to write." It is in this Bulletin where he describes the Queen of
Prussia (dressed as an Amazon, in the uniform of her regiment of
dragoons, and writing twenty letters a day) to be like Armida in her
frenzy, setting fire to her own palace.
No. 3.
By this time the Prussian army is already in a tight corner, with its
back on the Rhine, which, as Napoleon says in his Third Bulletin
written on this day, is "_assez bizarre_, from which very important
events should ensue." On the previous day he concludes a letter to
Talleyrand--"One cannot conceive how the Duke of Brunswick, to whom
one allows some talent, can direct the operations of this army in so
ridiculous a manner."
_Erfurt._--Here endless discussions, but, as Napoleon says in his
bulletin of this day--"Consternation is at Erfurt, ... but while they
deliberate, the French army is marching.... Still the wishes of the
King of Prussia have been executed; he wished that by October 8th the
French army should have evacuated the territory of the Confederation
which _has_ been evacuated, but in place of repassing the Rhine, it
has passed the Saal."
_If she wants to see a battle._--_Queen Louise_, great-grandmother of
the present Emperor William, and in 1806 aged thirty. St. Amand says
that "when she rode on horseback before her troops, with her helmet of
polished steel, shaded by a plume, her gleaming golden cuirass, her
tunic of cloth of silver, her red buskins with golden spurs," she
resembled, as the bulletin said, one of the heroines of Tasso. She
hated France, and especially Napoleon, as the child of the French
Revolution.
No. 4.
_I nearly captured him and the Queen._--They escaped only by an hour,
Napoleon writes Berthier. Blucher aided their escape by telling a
French General about an imaginary armistice, which the latter was
severely reprimanded by Napoleon for believing.
No battle was more beautifully worked out than the battle of
Jena--Davoust performing specially well his move in the combinations
by which the Prussian army was hopelessly entangled, as Mack at Ulm a
year before. Bernadotte alone, and as usual, gave cause for
dissatisfaction. He had a personal hatred for his chief, caused by the
knowledge that his wife (Desiree Clary) had never ceased to regret
that she had missed her opportunity of being the wife of Napoleon.
Bernadotte, therefore, was loth to give initial impetus to the
victories of the French Emperor, though, when success was no longer
doubtful, he would prove that it was not want of capacity but want of
will that had kept him back. He was the Talleyrand of the camp, and
had an equal aptitude for fishing in troubled waters.
_I have bivouacked._--Whether the issue of a battle was decisive,
or, as at Eylau, only partially so, Napoleon never shunned the
disagreeable part of battle--the tending of the wounded and the
burial of the dead. Savary tells us that at Jena, as at Austerlitz,
the Emperor rode round the field of battle, alighting from his horse
with a little brandy flask (constantly refilled), putting his hand
to each unconscious soldier's breast, and when he found unexpected
life, giving way to a joy "impossible to describe" (vol. ii. 184).
Meneval also speaks of his performing this "pious duty, in the
fulfilment of which nothing was allowed to stand in his way."
No. 5.
_Fatigues, bivouacs ... have made me fat._--The Austerlitz campaign
had the same effect. See a remarkable letter to Count Miot de Melito
on January 30th, 1806: "The campaign I have just terminated, the
movement, the excitement have made me stout. I believe that if all the
kings of Europe were to coalesce against me I should have a ridiculous
paunch." And it was so!
_The great M. Napoleon_, aged four, and the younger, aged two, are
with Hortense and their grandmother at Mayence, where a Court had
assembled, including most of the wives of Napoleon's generals, burning
for news. A look-out had been placed by the Empress some two miles on
the main-road beyond Mayence, whence sight of a courier was signalled
in advance.
No. 7.
_Potsdam._--As a reward for Auerstadt, Napoleon orders Davoust and his
famous Third Corps to be the first to enter Berlin the following day.
No. 8.
Written from Berlin, where he is from October 28th to November 25th.
_You do nothing but cry._--Josephine spent her evenings gauging
futurity with a card-pack, and although it announced Jena and
Auerstadt before the messenger, it may possibly, thinks M. Masson,
have been less propitious for the future--and behind all was the
sinister portion of the spae-wife's prophecy still unfulfilled.
No. 9A.
_Madame Tallien_ had been in her time, especially in the years
1795-99, one of the most beautiful and witty women in France. Previous Next |