Dennis Wheatley - The Ravishing of Lady Jane Ware

The watch answered Roger's hail; then a lengthy exchange took place, during which the Captain came on deck. At first he was most reluctant to take a female aboard; but, on being assured that she was the Countess of St. Ermins, a well known beauty who had many influential friends, he decided that it was better not to risk a reprimand from his superiors for having refused to assist her to escape from enemy territory.

At length a breeches buoy was let down, Roger lashed Georgina firmly into it, then she was hauled up, He had lowered the sails of his yacht and now sat down in the stern while she gently rocked. After waving Georgina away, he sadly watched the ship until she had disappeared into the darkness. He then hoisted sail and turned the yacht in the direction of St. Tropez, where he intended to sleep that night.

The following afternoon he told the Dufours that their mistress had received news that a member of her family was dangerously ill; so she had had to leave for Marseilles at a moment's notice. Next morning, with a heavy heart, he took the road to Paris.

6

A New Mission

When, on the 12th March, Roger reached the capital, he found it agog with excitement over the Emperor's approaching marriage, and was glad to learn that the bride was to be the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, the nineteen year-old daughter of the Emperor Francis.

The Russian alliance, entered into with such enthusiasm by the Czar in the summer of 1808, when the two Emperors had met on a raft in the middle of the river Niemen at Tilsit to agree an armistice, had never been popular with a great part of the Russian nobility; and later, when the two Emperors had met again at Erfurt, Alexander a mental as well as a born autocrat had baulked at the suggestion of giving his sister to a Corsican upstart. Finally, to avoid offending Napoleon, his formal proposal had been rejected by the Dowager Czarina on the excuse that her daughter was still too young to marry.

The result must be a further weakening of the Franco-Russian alliance, which gave Napoleon security in the north and could lead to his becoming still more powerful through the conquest and partition of Turkey; so Talleyrand, Fouche, Roger and everyone else who was secretly hoping for Napoleon's downfall were very pleased that the new Empress was to be the Austrian.

Having made his service to the Emperor, Roger rode out to Malmaison. Josephine received him with delight, had the best guest suite in the house prepared for him and said that he must order anything he desired, at her expense. During the next few days he took over from her Comptroller and found that there was nothing basically wrong with the running of the household. It was simply that the official had endeavored to check Josephine's extravagance, and had shown no tact in doing so. Feeling confident that he could always persuade the Emperor to give her more money, Roger made few changes and soon settled down to his new life.

As spring was now well on the way, much of his time was spent with Josephine in her beautiful garden. Flowers were her chief delight. Tens of thousands of bulbs were blooming in the glades, and in the hot-houses there were many rare tropical plants that she had had sent from her native Martinique. But, although she no longer drove in Paris, she was far from leading the life of a recluse.

Apart from the enmity of members of the Bonaparte family, she had been universally popular and her old friends flocked out to Malmaison to visit her; so Roger was kept up-to-date with all that was going on at Court.

Berthier had been sent to escort Marie Louise from Vienna, and the Emperor was to receive her at St. Cloud.

But with his usual impatience, instead of adhering to the arrangement, as soon as he learned that she had passed the frontier, he drove at full speed to meet her. To the surprise and dismay of her attendants, he dashed into a house where she had broken her journey to rest and, although soaked to the skin from having been exposed to the pouring rain, fervidly embraced her. He then hustled her out to his carriage and carried the frightened girl off to his palace at Compiegne. Then he declared his intention of sleeping with her that night. Vigorous protests were made, because the marriage had not yet taken place;

but she had been married by proxy to her uncle before leaving Vienna. Declaring that to be good enough for him, Napoleon whisked her up to bed.

She was quite an attractive girl, with light brown hair, blue eyes and a very fresh complexion, and had a good, somewhat buxom figure; but she was very shy and, not unnaturally, she had been greatly distressed at having to leave her family. When waiting on her one morning in her apartments, Berthier had found her weeping bitterly. She had pointed out to him that everything there was dear to her. There were a tapestry that had been worked by her mother, pictures painted by her uncle Charles, drawings by her sister; and, above all, she was heartbroken at having to leave behind her little pet dog.

In spite of her sadness and timidity, Napoleon was enchanted with her. He could not do enough to reconcile her to exile and, a few days after they reached Paris thanks to Berthier's having hatched a little plot with her father before leaving Vienna he was able to give her a delightful surprise. Unlocking a door, he pushed her into a room and there were her tapestry, her paintings, all the other things she treasured, and her little dog.

To begin with, her shyness caused her to be haughty with the French ladies who formed her Court; but soon she made some good friends, and entertained those with whom she became intimate with the strange trick of being able to wiggle her ears.

The marriage was celebrated in Notre Dame on April 2nd, with almost unbelievable splendour. Not only were there a galaxy of subject Kings and Princes with their consorts, row upon row of High Dignitaries, Ambassadors, Marshals and Generals, but nearly every family of the old French nobility: de Rohan, de Richelieu, de Chevreuse, de Nemours, de Brissac, de Coigny, de Poligniac, de la Tour d'Auvergne, de Chalais and the rest were represented. For the past six years these émigrés had been welcomed back by Napoleon to add lustre to his

Court. They were not permitted to use their old titles ,but to many of them he had given new ones when he had created thirty-one Dukes, three hundred and eighty-eight Counts and one thousand and ninety Barons.

Now, on this festive occasion he made a new distribution of honour’s, and Roger found himself elevated to the rank of Count, with which went a pension of thirty thousand francs per annum, as it was Napoleon's practice to ensure that his nobility had ample funds with which to support their dignity. All the Marshals had been endowed with great estates and a few, like Berthier, had revenues of over a million francs a year.

In April, a matter that had been giving Napoleon considerable concern for some time boiled up into a major issue. His fat, neurotic brother Louis, whom he had made King of Holland, far from acknowledging to whom he owed his crown, declared that he had been sent to rule over the Dutch by God's will. On the one hand he taxed his subjects unmercifully to pay for every sort of extravagance; on the other he pleaded their interests as an excuse to thwart Napoleon at every opportunity.

But, in the present instance, he undoubtedly had a case. After Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, it had become clear that for a number of years to come the French Fleet would not again have the strength to challenge the Royal Navy. The invasion of England no longer being a possibility, Napoleon had conceived another means by which he hoped to force Britain into suing for peace.

This was his Continental System, initiated by him in a decree published at Berlin in the summer of 1806. By it every country in which the Emperor's writ ran was ordered to cease importing goods from England, Commerce was Britain's strength, as by it she acquired the great sums with which she had financed France's neighbours to make war on him. Through his System, he expected not only to prevent, from lack of funds, further coalitions being formed against France, but also to reduce Britain to bankruptcy.