Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

48With fevers caught in the rice-swamps of Lombardy.

49With aqua tofana, says Marmont.

50On reaching London a few months later Mistress Billington was engaged simultaneously by Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and during the following year harvested £10,000 from these two engagements.

51She was, however, no mere amateur, and knew, says Mlle. d'Avrillon, the names of all her plants, the family to which they belonged, their native soil, and special properties.

52 Rueil, le château de Richelieu et la Malmaison , by Jacquin and Duesberg, p. 130; in Aubenas' Joséphine , vol. i.

53Lucien declares that Napoleon said to his wife, in his presence and that of Joseph, "Imitate Livia, and you will find me Augustus."—(Jung, vol. ii. 206.) Lucien evidently suspects an occult sinister allusion here, but Napoleon is only alluding to the succession devolving on the first child of their joint families. Lucien refused Hortense, but Louis was more amenable to his brother's wishes. On her triumphal entry into Mühlberg (November 1805), the Empress reads on a column a hundred feet high—"Josephinae, Galliarum Augustae."

54Made Grand Huntsman in 1804.

55An anachronism; he was at this time First Consul.

56An euphuistic way of saying he could not learn longer ones. In war time Napoleon had to insist on Eugène keeping his letters with him and constantly re-reading them.

57The Emperor had himself planned the Itinerary, and had mistaken a projected road for a completed one, between Rethel and Marche.

58The first month of the Republican calendar.

59Memoirs, vol. ii. 165.

60Bouillet, Dictionnaire Universelle , &c.

61"The Queen of that Court was the fair Madame Tallien. All that imagination can conceive will scarcely approach the reality; beautiful after the antique fashion, she had at once grace and dignity; without being endowed with a superior wit, she possessed the art of making the best of it, and won people's hearts by her great kindness."— Memoirs of Marmont , vol. i., p. 887.

62This brave general was mortally wounded in the cavalry charge which saved the battle, and the friends of Bernadotte assert that the message was never given—an assertion more credible if the future king's record had been better on other occasions.

63Alison says 75,000 allies, 85,000 French, but admits allies had 100 more cannon.

64Augereau, says Méneval, went out of his mind during this battle, and had to be sent back to France.

65The Decree itself says "nos enfants et descendants males, legitimes et naturels."

66On October 11th Prince Ferdinand had written Napoleon for "the honour of allying himself to a Princess of his august family"; and Lucien's eldest daughter was Napoleon's only choice.

67Napoleon visited Madrid and its Palais Royal incognito, and (like Vienna) by night (Bausset).

68With Lejeune on one occasion.

69 Biographie Universelle. Michaud says ponies .

70This Archduke was the "international man" at this juncture. Louis Bonaparte speaks of a society at Saragossa, of which the object was to make the Archduke Charles king of Spain.

71These Adelphes or Philadelphes were the socialists or educated anarchists of that day. They wished for the statu quo before Napoleon became supreme ruler. They had members in his army, and it seems quite probable that Bernadotte gave them passive support. General Oudet was their recognised head, and he died under suspicious circumstances after Wagram. The society was, unlike the Carbonari, anti-Catholic.

72Pelet, vol. i. 127.

73Pelet, vol. i. 282.

74"Gaily asking his staff to breakfast with him" (Pelet).

75Lejeune says "some hours afterwards."

76Eugène's.

77"What a loss for France and for me," groaned Napoleon, as he left his dead friend.

78By here subordinating himself to the Senate, the Emperor was preparing a rod for his own back hereafter.

79This clause gives considerable trouble to Lacépède and Regnauld. They cannot even find a precedent whether, if they met, Josephine or Marie Louise would take precedence of the other.

80In addition to this, Napoleon gives her £40,000 a year from his privy purse, but keeps most of it back for the first two years to pay her 120 creditors. (For interesting details see Masson, Josephine Répudiée .)

81Which agrees with Madame d'Avrillon, who says they left the Tuileries at 2.30. Méneval says Napoleon left for Trianon a few hours later. Savary writes erroneously that they left the following morning.

82M. Masson seems to indicate a visit on December 16th, but does not give his authority ( Josephine Repudiée , 114).

83 Correspondence of Napoleon I. , No. 15,952.

84 New Letters of Napoleon , 1898.

85Canon Ainger's comparison.

86See Baron Lejeune for an interesting account of a chess quadrille at a dance given by the Italian Minister, Marescalchi.

87On this occasion Baron Lejeune sees the Archduke Charles, and remarks: "There was nothing in his quiet face with its grave and gentle expression, or in his simple, modest, unassuming manner, to denote the mighty man of war; but no one who met his eyes could doubt him to be a genius."

88"This gloomy and forsaken château," says St. Amand, "whose only attraction was the half-forgotten memory of its vanished splendours, was a fit image of the woman who came to seek sanctuary there."

89He endows the husband with £4000 a year, and the title of Count Tascher.

90"Une épouse sans époux, et une reine sans royaume"—St. Amand.

91Aubenas.

92Mlle. d'Avrillon says that during the Swiss voyage Josephine found it desirable, for the first time, to "wear whalebone in her corsets."

93The same question may be asked respecting the death of Montaigne.

94 Memoires et Correspondance de l'Impératrice Joséphine , par J. B. J. Innocert Philadelphe Regnault Varin . Paris, 1820, 8 o. This book is not in the British Museum Catalogue.

95 Josephine Impératrice et Reine , Paris, 1899.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

The First Wars (The Era of Directory)

The Consulate

The Early Years of the Empire

The Empire at Its Height

The Decline and Fall of Napoleon

Table of Contents

Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio in Corsica in 1769, a short time after the island had been sold by Genoa to France. The family was of Italian origin but had for two centuries and a half been resident in the island. His father, Charles Bonaparte, was of the nobility but was poor, indolent, pleasure-loving, a lawyer by profession. His mother, Laetitia Ramolino, was a woman of great beauty, of remarkable will, of extraordinary energy. Poorly educated, this "mother of kings" was never able to speak the French language without ridiculous mistakes. She had thirteen children, eight of whom lived to grow up, five boys and three girls. The father died when the youngest, Jerome, was only three months old. Napoleon, the second son, was educated in French military schools at Brienne and Paris, as a sort of charity scholar. He was very unhappy, surrounded as he was by boys who looked down upon him because he was poor while they were rich, because his father was unimportant while theirs belonged to the noblest families in France, because he spoke French like the foreigner he was, Italian being his native tongue. In fact he was tormented in all the ways of which schoolboys are past masters. He became sullen, taciturn, lived apart by himself, was unpopular with his fellows whom, in turn, he despised, conscious, as he was, of powers quite equal to any of theirs, of a spirit quite as high. His boyish letters home were remarkably serious, lucid, intelligent. He was excellent in mathematics, and was fond of history and geography. At the age of sixteen he left the military school and became a second lieutenant of artillery. One of his teachers described him at this time as follows: "Reserved and studious, he prefers study to amusement of any kind and enjoys reading the best authors; is diligent in the study of the abstract sciences, caring little for anything else. He is taciturn and loves solitude, is capricious, haughty, and excessively self-centered. He talks little but is quick and energetic in his replies, prompt and incisive in repartee. He has great self-esteem, is ambitious, with aspirations that will stop at nothing. Is worthy of patronage."