LXIII. 1810. 17. Character of Marie Louise. esteem of his conquerors, as it must command the respect of all succeeding ages of the world. Born in the highest rank, descended from the noblest ancestry, called to the most exalted destinies, the daughter of the Cæsars, the wife of Napoleon, the mother of his son, Marie Louise appeared to unite in her person all the grandeur and felicity of which human nature is susceptible. But her mind had received no lofty impress; her character was unworthy of the greatness of her fortune. She had the blood of Maria Theresa in her veins, but not her spirit in her soul. Her fair hair, blue eyes, and pleasing expression, bespoke the Gothic race; and the affability of her demeanour, and sweetness of her manner, at first produced a general prepossession in her favour. But she was adapted to the sunshine of prosperity only; the wind of adversity blew, and she sank before its breath. Young, amiable, prepossessing, she won the Emperor's affections by the naïveté and simplicity of her character ; and he always said that she was innocence with all its sweetness, Josephine grace with all its charms. "All the attractions of art," he said, "were employed by the first Empress, with such skill that they were never perceived; all the charms of innocence displayed by the second, with such simplicity that their existence was never suspected." Both were benevolent, kind-hearted, Las Cases, affectionate; both, to the last hour of his life, retained i. 330; ii. the warm regard of the Emperor; and both possessed qualities worthy of his affection.1 112. 18. If her husband had lived and died on the imperial Her faults. throne, few empresses would have left a more blameless reputation than Marie Louise. But she was unequal to the trials of the latter years of his life. If her dubious situation, the daughter of one Emperor, the wife of another, both leaders in the strife, might plead her excuse for not taking any decided part in favour of the national independence on the invasion of France, the misfortunes of her husband and son had claims upon her fidelity LXIII. 1810. which should never have been overlooked. The wife of CHAP. the Emperor should never have permitted him to go into exile alone; the mother of the King of Rome should never have forgotten to what destinies her son had been born. What an object would she, after such sacrifices, returning from St Helena after Napoleon's death, have formed in history! Force may have prevented her from discharging that sacred duty; but force did not compel her to appear at the Congress of Vienna, leaning on the arm of Wellington, nor oblige the widow of Napoleon to sink at last into the degraded wife of her own chamberlain.* 19. the Emperor Shortly after his marriage, the Emperor set out with his young bride for the Low Countries. They pro- Journey of ceeded by St Quentin, Cambray, and Valenciennes, to and Em Brussels, everywhere received with adulatory addresses, press to Belgium. passing under triumphal arches, and entering cities amidst the roar of artillery. But other cares than the civil government of his dominions, other designs than the amusement of the young Empress, occupied the mind of the Emperor. The war with England still continued; maritime preparations were necessary for its subjugation; Antwerp was the centre of these preparations. It was from the Scheldt that the mortal stroke was to be dealt out. The first care of the Emperor, therefore, was to visit the citadel, fortifications, and vast naval preparations at this important point. An eighty-gun ship was launched in his presence, and one of the new forts erecting on the left bank of the river, beyond the Tête-deFlandre, was called by the name of Marie Louise, which it still bears. He had every reason to be satisfied with the works in progress. Thirty ships of the line, nearly as great a fleet as that which was destroyed at Trafalgar, were ready for sea in the docks. From Antwerp the Emperor descended the Scheldt to Flushing and Middle * Marie Louise died, unpitied and almost forgotten, at Parma on the 20th December 1847. LXIII. 1810. CHAP. burg, where he gave directions for extensive works and fortifications, that were to do more than repair the devastations which had been committed by the English in the island of Walcheren. They afterwards returned by Ghent, Lisle, Calais, Boulogne, and Havre de Grace, to Paris, which they reached on the 1st of June. Napoleon there assisted in the interment of the body of Marshal Lannes at the Chapel of the Invalides at Paris. The direction of this journey, undertaken so shortly after his marriage, revealed the secret designs of the Emperor. Naval preparations, the conquest of England, were uppermost in his thoughts; and if any additional arguments were necessary to vindicate the destination given to the Walcheren expedition, it would be found in the direction. he gave to this journey.1 1 Thib. viii. 124, 129. 20. at Prince Schwartzenberg's ball. July 6. A deplorable event occurred shortly after, which Dreadful recalled the recollection of the lamentable accident that catastrophe had occurred on the occasion of the marriage of Marie Antoinette, and was regarded of sinister augury for the marriage of the young Empress. Prince Schwartzenberg, the Austrian ambassador at Paris, gave a magnificent ball on the 6th of July, at which the Emperor and Empress and the whole court were assembled. From the great number of guests expected on the occasion, it was deemed necessary to enlarge the accommodations of his hotel. The large dancing-room was fitted up in the most sumptuous manner, in a temporary building behind, and the festoons and drapery, in particular, excited universal admiration. By accident, one of the gauze curtains took fire from a lamp in its vicinity, and the flames rapidly spread over the whole roof and interior of the structure. The coolness of Napoleon was as conspicuous here as in the field of battle; he immediately sought out the Empress, took her quietly by the arm, and led her out of danger. Many persons, however, were scorched by the flames, or wounded by the falling of the beams, and some of them died afterwards of these injuries. But LXIII. 1810. all lesser misfortunes were forgotten in the dreadful fate CHAP. of the Princess Pauline of Schwartzenberg, the sister-inlaw of the ambassador. This amiable person had been one of the last of the company who escaped from the burning room, with her daughter in her hand. Both had got out in safety; but, in the confusion, the child was separated from her mother, and the latter, conceiving that she had been left behind in the scene of danger, rushed, with generous devotion, back again into the burning saloon, and was crushed by the falling of the beams. So fierce were the flames, that the place where the unfortunate princess had perished could only be discovered by a gold ornament she had worn on her arm, which resisted the conflagration. This frightful incident excited a deep sensation in Paris, chiefly from its being regarded as a prognostic connected with the marriage of the Empress. But history must assign it a higher character, and commemorate the fate of the Princess Schwartzenberg as one of the noblest instances of maternal heroism recorded in the annals of the world.1 Bign. ix. 159. Thib. viii. 128, 129. This period was rendered remarkable by the fall of one 21. of the ministers of Napoleon, who had hitherto exercised Singular the most unbounded influence in the internal concerns of of Fouché. intrigue the empire. Fouché, whose talents for intrigue, and thorough acquaintance with the details both of Jacobin conspiracy and police administration, had hitherto rendered him a necessary part of the imperial administration, fell into disgrace. The immediate cause of his fall was the improper use and undue extension which he gave to a secret proposition at this time made to the British government, by Napoleon, for a general peace. The Dutch ambassador was the agent employed in this mysterious communication, and the proposals of Napoleon went to surrender to the English almost the entire government of the seas, provided that that power would abandon to him the uncontrolled sovereignty of the continent of Europe. In his secret conferences with the French agent CHAP. 1810. May 1810. 1 Fouché, i. 417, 418. Bign. ix. viii. 130, Ante, ch. on this subject, the person employed by Marquis Wellesley insisted strongly on the prosperous condition of the British empire, and its ability to withstand a long period of future warfare from the resources which the monopoly of the trade of the world had thrown into its hands. These views singularly interested Napoleon, who had more than one agent employed in the transaction. This negotiation was discovered by Fouché, and either from an excusable desire to get to the bottom of the views of the British cabinet on the subject, or from an insatiable passion for intrigue, which could not allow any such transaction to go on without assuming its direction, he took it upon himself, without the knowledge or authority of the Emperor, to open a secret negotiation indirectly with Marquis Wellesley.1 The agent employed in these 136. Thib. mysterious communications was M. Ouvrard, a man of 134. considerable skill in diplomatic negotiations, and whose xlii. § 11. vast monetary transactions had already produced such important effects in the early part of Napoleon's reign.2 Ouvrard repaired to Amsterdam, where he entered The intrigue into communication with an Irishman of the name of Fagan, in London. Labouchère, an agent of the King of Holland, who had formerly been on a similar mission to the British government, was also employed in the transaction, and he communicated it to his sovereign Louis, by whom it was revealed to Napoleon at Antwerp. Ouvrard was in consequence arrested, immediately after Napoleon's return to Paris, and closely interrogated by the Emperor. It was proved from this examination, and from the documents found in his possession, that the basis of Fouché's propositions were, that the government of the continent of Europe should be surrendered to Napoleon, and that of all the transmarine states and the seas to England, with the exception of South America, which was to be made over to the French Emperor. In order to accomplish this double spoliation, a French army of forty thousand men was to be embarked on board an 22. is discover ed. |