Life of Josephine
CHAPTER I
FAMILY—EARLY SURROUNDINGS—EUGENE DE BEAUHARNAIS—MARRIAGE—SEPARATION FROM HER HUSBAND
The proudest monument in the Island of Martinique, in the French West Indies, so any inhabitant will tell you, is the statue of a woman in the town of St. Pierre. The woman thus honored is Josephine, once Empress of the French People, who, so the legend on the pedestal of the statue relates was born at the hamlet of Trois Ilets, Martinique, on June 23, 1763.
If one searches in the legends of the island for an explanation of the position to which the child of this humble spot arose, he will find nothing more serious than the prophecy of an old negress, made to the little girl herself, that one day she would be Queen of France. If he looks in the chronicles of the island for an explanation, he will find nothing to indicate that she could ever rise higher than the life of an indolent creole, a life narrowed by poverty and made tolerable chiefly by the beauty of the nature about her and by her own happy indifference of temperament.
Joseph Tascher de la Pagerie, the child’s father, was the eldest son of a noble of Blois, France, who went to Martinique in the first quarter of the eighteenth century chiefly because he could not succeed in anything in his own country. He did no better in Martinique than he had done in France and was only able to start his children in life by dint of soliciting favors for them from his well-to-do relatives at home. For Joseph he obtained a small military position, but the lad was no better at improving his opportunities than his father had been and returned to Martinique after a few years a lieutenant of marines—without a place.
When soliciting failed, nothing was left in those days for a nobleman who did not relish work but marriage, and Joseph succeeded, by help of his friends, in making a very good one with Mlle. Rose-Claire des Vergers de Sannois, whose father was of noble descent and, what was more to the point, was prosperous and of good standing in Martinique. Joseph went to live on a charming plantation belonging to his father-in-law, just back from the sea and near the village of Trois Ilets. Soon after this, war with the English called him into service as a defender of the French West Indies. The war was not long, and for his services he secured a pension of 450 livres (about ninety dollars). It came none too soon, for a passing hurricane devastated the plantation at Trois Ilets in 1766, and drove the family into one of the sugar houses to live. M. de la Pagerie was never able to repair the damages to his plantation done by the storm or build another home for his family. He never, indeed, followed any steady employment, but idled his life away in gaming, intrigue, and soliciting—always in debt, always in bad odor among honest men—his only asset his birth.
But to the happiness of little Josephine it mattered very little in those days whether her home was a sugar-house or a palace, her father an honest man or a sycophant. Her days were spent under the brilliant skies, in the forests or the open fields, chasing birds and butterflies, and gathering the gorgeous tropical flowers which to the end of her life she passionately loved. Almost her only companions were the negroes of the plantations, who gave her willing admiration and obedience. Untaught, unrestrained, idolized by slaves, knowing nothing but the tropical luxury and beauty of the nature about her, she developed like the birds and the negroes, becoming, it is true, a graceful, beautiful little animal, but with hardly more moral sense than they and with even less sense of responsibility.
Josephine was ten years old before it occurred to anybody to send her to school. So far her only instruction had been what little she had gathered from a mother occupied with younger children; from the priest of Trois Ilets, who, it is fair to suppose, must have at least tried to teach her the catechism, and from the curious lore and gossip of the negroes. At ten, however, she was sent to a convent at Fort Royale, where she remained some four years. Here she was taught such rudimentary knowledge as enabled her to read,—if not understand, to write a polite note, to dance,—not very well, to sing, and play the guitar a little. It was a small equipment, but no doubt as good as most young girls of Martinique possessed in that day. Indeed many a noble-born maid in France started out with less in the eighteenth century, and it was quite as much as one would suppose from her position that she would need—more than she used indeed, for little Yeyette, as Josephine was called, if amiable and obedient when she left the convent, was indolent and vain, loving far better her childish play of decorating herself with brilliant flowers and watching her own image in the clear water of the pools on the plantation, than she did books and music; and the loving flattery of her old nurse was dearer to her than any amusement she found in the meager society of the island, where she now was to take her place and, her parents hoped, help retrieve the bad fortunes of the family by a good marriage.
The opportunity came quickly. Josephine had been but a few months out of the convent when one day her father laid before her what must have been a bewildering and, one would suppose, a terrifying proposition—would she like to leave Martinique and go to France, there to marry Alexander de Beauharnais. The boy was not unknown to her. Like herself, he was born in Martinique, and though he had left there when she was only seven years old and he ten, it is not unlikely that she had seen him occasionally at the home of her grandmother who cared for him in the absence of his father and mother in France.
The influence which had led the father of Alexander de Beauharnais to ask for the hand of a daughter of M. de la Pagerie for his son was not altogether creditable. The two families had never known each other until 1757, when M. de Beauharnais came to Martinique as its governor. The elder M. de la Pagerie was not slow in seeking the new governor’s acquaintance and support for his family, for the latter was rich and in favor with the king at Versailles. The relation prospered sufficiently for M. de la Pagerie to secure a place in the household of the governor for one of his daughters. He could have done nothing better for his family. This daughter was not long in gaining an important influence over both M. and Mme. de Beauharnais, and in winning as a husband M. Renaudin, an excellent man and prosperous. This for herself. For her family, she secured so many favors from the governor that it became a matter of serious criticism and finally, added to other indiscretions, led to a divorce between her and M. Renaudin. All this scandal did not influence the governor, however, and when, in 1761, he left Martinique, on account of the dissatisfaction with his administration there, and hurried to France with his wife to make his peace at Versailles, Mme. Renaudin went, too. There she prospered, buying a home and laying aside money. It was M. de Beauharnais’s money, people said. However this may be, it is certain that she exercised great influence over him, that for her he neglected his wife, and that after the latter’s death the friendship or liaison continued until his death.
From all this it will be seen that Mme. Renaudin was a clever woman, intent on making the most out of the one really strong relation she had been able to form in her life. She was clever enough to see, when Alexander was brought to France after his mother’s death, that his love and gratitude would be one of her strongest cards with the father in the future. She set to work to win the boy’s heart, and she succeeded admirably. In his eyes, she took his mother’s place, and her influence over him was almost unlimited.
By the time he was seventeen, Alexander de Beauharnais was a most attractive youth. He had been well educated in the manner of his time, having been, with his elder brother, under the care of an excellent tutor for a number of years, two of which, at least, were passed in Germany. After his brother entered the army, Alexander and his tutor joined the household of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld and there studied with the latter’s nephews. In this aristocratic atmosphere he imbibed all the new liberal ideas of the day; he learned, at the same time, the graces of the most exquisite French society and the philosophy of Rousseau. Alexander was seventeen years old when his education was pronounced finished, and a search was made for a place for him suitable to his birth, his relations, and his ambition. Thanks, largely, to the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, he was made a lieutenant in the army.
No sooner was his position in the world fixed, than Mme. Renaudin made up her mind that he must marry one of her nieces in Martinique. It mattered not at all that Alexander had not yet thought of marriage. Mme. Renaudin persuaded him it would be a good thing—not a difficult task for her since at marriage the youth was to come into a much larger income than he then enjoyed. Alexander satisfied, she soon persuaded his father to write to M. de la Pagerie. The letter shows the whole situation:—“My children,” wrote M. de Beauharnais, “each enjoy an annual income of 40,000 livres (about $8,000). You are free to give me your daughter to share the fortune of my chevalier. The respect and affection he has for Mme. Renaudin make him eager to marry one of her nieces. You see that I consent freely to his wishes by asking the hand of your second daughter, whose age is more suited to his. If your eldest daughter (Josephine) had been a few years younger, I certainly should have preferred her, as she is pictured quite as favorably to me as the other; but my son, who is only seventeen and a half, thinks that a young lady of fifteen is too near his own age.”
Now, just before this letter reached Martinique, the second daughter of M. de la Pagerie had died of fever. The chance was not to be missed, however, and the father hastened to write to M. de Beauharnais that he might have either of the two daughters remaining; Josephine or Marie, the latter then a child of between eleven and twelve years. From the long correspondence which followed, one gathers that it is the elders in the transaction who really count. Alexander is resigned, little Marie absolutely refuses to leave her mother, and Josephine, of whom little is said, seems to be willing, even eager for the adventure. The upshot of it was that, in October, 1779, M. de la Pagerie sailed for France with Josephine. He arrived at Brest in November, worn out by the passage, and there his sister, Mme. Renaudin, came with Alexander to meet them. If the first impression of his fiancée did not arouse any enthusiasm in Alexander, it at least offered no reason for breaking the engagement. “She is not so pretty as I expected,” he wrote to his father; “but I can assure you that the frankness and sweetness of her character are beyond anything we have been told.”
From Brest the little party travelled together to Paris, where the marriage took place on December 12. The young pair at once went to live with the Marquis de Beauharnais, and that winter Josephine was introduced into the brilliant society of the capital. She seems to have made but a poor impression, for in spite of the 20,000 livres that Mme. Renaudin had spent on her trousseau, she had after all a provincial air which irritated her husband, accustomed as he was to the ease and elegance of aristocratic Paris. What was worse in his eyes, she seemed to have no desire to improve herself on the models he laid down. Poor little Josephine had no head for the exaggerated sentiment, the fine speculations, and the chatter about liberty, nature and the social contract which flowed so glibly from every French tongue in those days. She loved pretty gowns and jewels and childish amusements; above all, she demanded to be loved exclusively and passionately by her handsome young husband. When he scolded her, she cried, and when he devoted himself to brighter women, she was jealous; and so before the first six months of their married life was over, Josephine was seeing many unhappy hours, and the Viscount gladly left her behind when he was called to his regiment. Nevertheless, in his absence, he wrote her long letters, largely of advice on what she should study, and took pains to laugh at her jealousy and her complaints. The birth of their first child, in September, 1781, a boy, who received the name of Eugène, did little to restore peace between the two. The Viscount continued to spend much time away from Paris, either with his regiment or in travel, and when at home, he did not always share his pleasures with his wife. The tactics with which Josephine met his restlessness and his indifference were the worst possible to be used on a man whose passion was for ideas, for elevated sentiments, for bold and brilliant actions—she was amiable and indolent as a kitten until a new neglect came, and then she gave up to a continuous weeping.
One reason, no doubt, of the restlessness of Beauharnais was his failure to advance in his profession as fast as he desired. He had been made a captain, but he wished for a regiment; and when late in 1782 a descent of the English on Martinique threatened, he enlisted for service there. Peace was made between France and England before he had an opportunity to distinguish himself, but he remained in Martinique some time. He had fallen in love there; and unhappily his new mistress had persuaded him that Josephine had had love affairs of her own before she left Martinique to marry him. There was never any proof of the truth of any of the stories she retailed to him; but Beauharnais was glad to have a reason for deserting his wife, and he wrote her a brutal letter, in which he justified his demand for a divorce by the righteous indignation which had seized him when he heard of her follies. The letter reached Josephine in the summer of 1783. In the April before, she had given birth to a daughter, christened Hortense-Eugénie. It was the first word she had received from her husband since her confinement.
Beauharnais reached Paris in October (his mistress had preceded him); and in spite of the efforts of his family and friends, all of whom took Josephine’s part, he secured a separation. She, however, received from the courts the fullest reparation possible, considering the Viscount’s means—a pension for herself and the children; the custody of Eugène, until he was five years old, and permanent possession of Hortense.
Josephine now went to live at the Abbey de Panthemont, a refuge for women of the French nobility who had suffered in one way or another. Here her youth, beauty, sweetness of disposition, and her misfortune made her a favorite with many a noble dame; and she soon learned in this atmosphere more of the ways of aristocratic society than she had learned in all her previous married life.
After nearly a year in the Abbey, Josephine returned to her father-in-law, who was living at Fontainebleau. The life she here took up pleased her very well. She had an income for herself and children of something over $2,000 a year, she was free, she knew many amusing people, she had admirers, many say, lovers,—we should be surprised more if she had not had them than if she had, it was the way of her world. She was devoted to her children, she cared for the Marquis de Beauharnais and Mme. Renaudin in their illnesses, and she corresponded regularly with her husband—whom she never saw—concerning their children. In 1788, she broke the monotony of her life by a trip to Martinique, taking Hortense with her. She remained some two years in the island—a sad two years, for both her father and her sister were very ill at the time, and both died soon after her return to Paris, in the fall of 1790.
CHAPTER II
JOSEPHINE IN THE REVOLUTION—IMPRISONED AT LES CARMES—STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE—MARRIAGE WITH BONAPARTE
When Josephine returned to Paris in 1790, she found the city in full revolution. In the two years she had been gone the States Generals had met, the Bastile had fallen, the National Assembly had begun to make France over. In the front of all this activity moved her husband, Viscount de Beauharnais. Like his patron, the Duke de la Rouchefoucauld, Beauharnais was an ardent advocate of liberty and equality. Sent to the States General by his friends at Blois, he had joined the few noblemen there who in 1789 espoused the cause of the Revolution, and soon was one of the leaders of the faction. Later he was sent to the National Assembly, where he took an active part in framing the constitution. He was a power even in the Jacobin Society.
At this date the revolution was still the fashion among the elegant in Paris, and the Viscount really was one of the most popular and influential young noblemen in the town. His success, the ardor with which he preached the fine theories of the day, perhaps a growing realization that his treatment of his wife was too baldly inconsistent with his profession, softened the Viscount’s heart towards Josephine, and when she returned he went to see her. A kind of reconciliation followed. They continued to live apart, but they saw each other constantly in society. The Viscount no doubt was the more willing to sustain the relation of a good friend and advisor to his wife, when he saw that in the years since their separation she had developed into a most charming woman of the world, and that her beauty, grace, tact, and readiness to oblige had won her a large circle of friends, including many in that aristocratic circle of which he vaunted himself on being a member. This good understanding with Beauharnais did much for Josephine’s peace of mind. It was in a way a victory, and her friends congratulated her. At the same time any honors which came to the Viscount reflected on her, and she steadily became more noticed.
In June, 1791, Beauharnais was elected president of the Constituent Assembly. A few days later, the King and Queen fled to Varennes. As the head of the Assembly, the Viscount was the leader of France for the time. It was he who sat for one hundred and twenty-six and one-half consecutive hours on the bench during the violent session which followed the King’s flight; it was he who questioned the captured King, when he was returned, and directed the distracted proceedings which followed. Indeed, until the dissolution of the body in September, he was one of the most prominent men in France.
Josephine had her share of his glory, and in these months added largely to her circle of acquaintances from the motley crowd which the levelling of things had brought together in French society. She met many of the aristocrats unknown to her until then; but what was vastly more important, she made acquaintances among the “true patriots”, those who had been born in the third estate, and who were already beginning to consider themselves the only part of the population fit to conduct the general regeneration of France. In 1792, war breaking out, Beauharnais went to the front, where he made a respectable record, which he himself reported frequently to the Assembly in glowing letters, filled with good advice to that body. He was steadily advanced until, in May, 1793, he was made general-in-chief of the Army of the North. During all this period Josephine was in Paris or the vicinity, and there were few more active women there than she. Whether advised by her husband or not she had the wit to make the acquaintance of the men of each new party as fast as it came into power. Thus, when the Girondins were at the helm in 1792, she hastened to interview them one by one, to demonstrate to them her devotion to the new civism, to extol the patriotism of her husband, General de Beauharnais. The acquaintance made, she immediately had a favor to ask—this friend was in prison, that one wanted a passport. All through the agitated winter of 1792 and 1793 Josephine was busy getting her friends out of prison and out of France. She seems to have had no fear for herself. As a matter of fact, the men who helped her were so convinced of her simple goodness of heart that they granted her much which would have been denied a more intelligent woman, and they did not question her loyalty. Was she not, too, the wife of General de Beauharnais? That fact did not, however, hold value for many months. Beauharnais’s conduct came into question before the Assembly; he resigned, offering to go into the line. The privilege was denied him, and he was retired from the army. He went at once to his family home near Blois, and threw himself actively into the work of the municipality and of the Jacobins. Josephine, warned of possible danger from her husband’s downfall and fearing the new law against the suspected, decided to leave Paris. She rented, in the winter, a little house at Croissy, not far out of the city, and near many of her friends, and there lived as quietly as she could. One method that she took of showing her devotion to democratic principles was to bind Eugène, who had been in school for several years, as an apprentice to a carpenter; and it is said that Hortense was placed with a dressmaker to learn the trade.
The Viscount escaped arrest until the spring of 1794; then the committee of Public Safety remembered him. There seems to have been no reason for his arrest other than that he was a noble—certainly no man in France had surpassed him in vehement republicanism or had been more fertile in schemes for saving the country. He was taken immediately to Paris, and confined in the prison of les Carmes. A month later, Josephine followed him. Her activity for her friends had continued after the retirement of her husband and the efforts she began at once to make to save him when he was arrested, caused a virtuous patriot to suggest anonymously to the authorities that she too ought to be looked after. She was promptly arrested.
For three months husband and wife lived side by side in that awful prison, the walls of which still bore the red imprints made in the September massacre, and in garden of which blood still oozed, it was believed, from the roots of the tree where murdered men had been stacked up by the score. With them were confined men from every rank of life, princes, merchants, sailors, chimney-sweeps, along with women and children. Almost daily a group was called to die, but their places were quickly filled. The awful tragedy of their lot drew Josephine and her husband no closer together. It is a terrible comment on the times that no one thought it strange that Beauharnais should have paid court here at the gate of death to a beautiful woman, a prisoner like himself, or that Josephine should have been so intimate with General Hoche, also a prisoner, that history has made a record of the fact.
Many efforts were made to save the Viscount and his wife, chiefly under their direction, for they were allowed to see their friends, and also their children. It is quite possible that certain petitions in their favor which have been found in the French archives, bearing the names of Eugène and Hortense, were dictated by the Viscount himself. But every effort was useless, and on July 21 Beauharnais was taken to the Conciergerie: the next day he was tried; the next guillotined. To the end he was brave and self-controlled. In his final words to Josephine, he even charged his death to the plots of the aristocrats, upholding the republic even as it struck him.
None of the Viscount de Beauharnais’s courage was shared by Josephine in her imprisonment. It is true that the majority of the women who suffered death in the French Revolution faced it bravely. Josephine was not of their blood. From the beginning of her imprisonment, she wept continually before everybody, and her favorite occupation was reading her fortune with cards; and yet cowardly as she was, no one was better loved. There was reason enough for this. No one was kinder, no one more willing to do a service, no one had been more active for others than she, when at liberty. All the good will of the prison came out in full when, on August 6, less than a fortnight after her husband’s death, she was set free. There was as general rejoicing as there would have been over the release of a child.
It is not certain through whose influence Josephine obtained her freedom. Mme. Tallien has generally been credited with securing it, but Masson in his delving has found dates which make it improbable that the legend current can be true. According to this, Mme. Tallien (then Mme. de Fontenay) and Josephine were fellow-prisoners, and it was at les Carmes that their friendship began. However, the prison records show that Mme. Tallien was never confined at les Carmes, but at la Petite Force; so that a part at least of the legend is impossible. That she may have interested herself in Josephine’s behalf is quite possible, even probable. She may have known Mme. de Beauharnais before her imprisonment. It is well known that, as soon as she received her own freedom she became an ardent advocate of that clemency which was made possible by the fall of Robespierre on the ninth Thermidor and that she rescued many persons. She may very well have included Josephine among the first of those she sought to save. Her task in this case would not have been difficult, for Josephine was known to most of the members of the Terrorist Government and was probably on terms of intimacy with some of them. At all events, Josephine was set free on August 6, and she immediately went to Croissy to pass the autumn.
The problems which now confronted Josephine were serious enough for the most practical and resourceful of women. The chaos in French business affairs made it very difficult for her to get her hand on money coming to her. Her husband’s property was tied up by his death so that she could realize nothing from it, and the value of what she did secure of her income must have been sadly reduced by the general depreciation which had resulted from the Reign of Terror and from the war, and by the exorbitant prices of even the commonest necessaries of life—bread at this time was over twenty francs a pound. Her situation was still more difficult because the personal property of herself, her children, and husband was all in the hands of the authorities. She had no linen, furniture, silver, clothing, nothing needful in her daily life. To keep house in the simplest way, she had to beg and borrow, and it was many months before she was able to secure her own articles of clothing and her household furniture.
With two children to care for and with a town apartment and a country cottage on her hands, she was in a very difficult position.
That Josephine was able to keep her homes, care for her children, and retain her position in the society of the Directory was due to the friendship and protection of two men, Hoche and Barras. Hoche had been liberated from les Carmes before Josephine, and put in charge of an army, and he at once took Eugène on his staff, thus freeing Josephine’s mind of that care. For a few months she managed by diligent borrowing and mortgaging to keep things going. In all of her efforts to repair her fortune and secure to her children the estate of Beauharnais, she enlisted her friends, especially Mme. Tallien, who just then was at the height of her power. The two became very intimate, and the Viscountess de Beauharnais was soon one of the women oftenest seen at the functions given by the members of the Directory as well as at all the more intimate gatherings of that society. She became as great a favorite among the dissipated and prodigal company as she had been among the aristocratic ladies of the Abbey de Panthemont or in the motley company at les Carmes. It was to be expected that she could not long be an intimate of Mme. Tallien’s salon without finding a protector. She found him in Barras, a member of the Directory, its most influential member in fact, a prince of corruption, but a man of elegance, and ability.
It is probable that the liaison with Barras began in 1795, for in August of that year Josephine took a little house in Paris, furnishing it largely from the apartment in town which she had kept so long. She put Hortense in Mme. Campan’s school, and taking Eugène from Hoche sent him to college. She entertained constantly in her new home, and once a week at least received Barras and his friends at her country place at Croissy. It was an open secret that the money for all this was supplied by Barras.
Although Barras was himself notoriously corrupt, he was a man of elegant and highly cultivated tastes, and he always made strenuous efforts to keep his inner circle exclusive. He wished only persons of wit, elegance, and ease about him, when he was at leisure, and as a rule he allowed no others. Now and then, however, the necessities of politics brought into his house a man unused either to its polite refinements or its elegant dissipations. Such a man was admitted in the fall of 1795—a young Corsican, a member of the army who had distinguished himself at the siege of Toulon, and who had recently put Barras and the whole government, in fact, under obligations. The man’s name was Bonaparte—Napoleon Bonaparte. He had come to Paris in the spring of 1795, under orders to join the Western Army, but had fallen into disgrace because he refused to obey. He succeeded, however, through Barras, who had known him at Toulon, in making an impression at the War Office. He was more than an ordinary man, the authorities who listened to his talk and examined his plans of campaign said. A chance came in October to try his metal as a commanding officer. The sections of Paris, dissatisfied with the Convention, had planned an attack for a certain night. The Committee of Defence asked Bonaparte to take command of the guard which was to defend the Tuileries, where the Convention sat. The result was a quick and effectual repulse of the attack of the sections, and Bonaparte was rewarded the next day by being made a general-of-division.
One of the first acts to follow the attack on the Convention was a law ordering that all citizens should be disarmed. Now, Josephine had in her apartment the sword of General de Beauharnais, and in obedience to the new law she at once carried it to the proper authority. Eugène, knowing her intention, hastened there too, and passionately protested against his father’s sword being given up. He would die first, he declared, with boyish vehemence. His youth (he was but fourteen), his genuine emotion touched the commissioner, who hesitated and finally said that Eugène might go to the general in charge of the section, the newly made General Bonaparte, and present his petition. The boy hastened to the General, and with shining eyes and trembling lips, begged that his father’s sword might be returned. Bonaparte, moved by the lad’s earnestness and agitation, ordered that his request be granted. Mme. de Beauharnais, on hearing the story from Eugène, went to the General’s office to thank him. The interview ended by her inviting him to call upon her. It is probable that Barras had felt it wise to admit Bonaparte to his inner circle at about this time, and before long the young general was on good terms with the entire society.
At the time when Bonaparte began to frequent the houses of Barras and Josephine he was, beside most of the men and women he met there—certainly beside Barras and Josephine—a paragon of virtue. They were disciples of pleasure; he of the strenuous life. Up to this time the pleasures of the world had never invited him. He had looked on them as a young philosopher might, bent on seeing and understanding all, but he had never sought them, never been allured by them. To make a place and name for himself was all that Napoleon Bonaparte, up to this time, had desired.
Not only did he here, for the first time, come into a circle which cultivated pleasure as an end; but here, for the first time, he saw the refinements, the luxury, the delights of highly developed society. Beautiful, graceful, and witty women he had never known before; he had never set foot before in rooms such as these in which he found Josephine, Mme. Tallien, and Barras. Dinners like these they offered him were an amazement. Not only was he astonished by his surroundings, he was intoxicated by the attention he received. That Josephine, who seemed to him the perfect type of the grande dame, should invite him to her home, write him flattering little notes when his visits were delayed, admire his courage, listen to his impetuous talk, prophesy a great future for him, excited his imagination and hope as nothing ever had before. A month had not passed before he was paying her an impassioned court. That she was six years his senior and a widow with two children; that she had no certain income and was of another rank; that he had nothing but his “cloak and sword” and was hardly started in his career, though with a mother and several brothers and sisters looking to him to see them through life—these and all other practical considerations seem to have been thrust aside. He loved Josephine and meant to marry her. All through the fall and winter of 1795 and 1796 he was at her side pressing his suit.
But Josephine, though pleased by Napoleon’s devotion, and certainly encouraging him, hesitated. Certainly marriage with the young Corsican was a venture at which a more courageous woman than she might have hesitated, and she, poor woman, had had enough of ventures. Every one so far had ended in disaster—her marriage had ended in separation, her reconciliation with her husband in his death, her property had been lost in a revolution. All she asked of life was an opportunity to settle Eugène and Hortense, and freedom and money enough to be gay. Could she expect this from a marriage with Bonaparte? She herself analyzed her feelings admirably in a letter to a friend:
I am urged, my dear, to marry again by the advice of all my friends (I may almost say), by the commands of my aunt, and the prayers of my children. Why are you not here to help me by your advice on this important occasion, and to tell me whether I ought or ought not to consent to a union, which certainly seems calculated to relieve me from the discomfort of my present situation? Your friendship would render you clear-sighted to my interests, and a word from you would suffice to bring me to a decision.
Among my visitors you have seen General Bonaparte; he is the man who wishes to become a father to the orphans of Alexander de Beauharnais and a husband to his widow.
“Do you love him?” is naturally your first question.
My answer is, “perhaps—No.”
“Do you dislike him?”
“No,” again; but the sentiments I entertain towards him are of that lukewarm kind which true devotees think worst of all in matters of religion. Now, love being a sort of religion, my feelings ought to be very different from what they really are. This is the point on which I want your advice, which would fix the wavering of my irresolute disposition. To come to a decision has always been too much for my Creole inertness, and I find it easier to obey the wishes of others.
I admire the General’s courage; the extent of his information on every subject on which he converses; his shrewd intelligence, which enables him to understand the thoughts of others before they are expressed; but I confess I am somewhat fearful of that control which he seems anxious to exercise over all about him. There is something in his scrutinizing glance that cannot be described; it awes even our directors, therefore it may well be supposed to intimidate a woman. He talks of his passion for me with a degree of earnestness which renders it impossible to doubt his sincerity; yet this very circumstance, which you would suppose likely to please me, is precisely that which has withheld me from giving the consent which I have often been on the very point of uttering.
My spring of life is past. Can I, then, hope to preserve for any length of time that ardor of affection which in the General amounts almost to madness? If his love should cool, as it certainly will, after our marriage, will he not reproach me for having prevented him from forming a more advantageous connection? What, then, shall I say? What shall I do? I may shut myself up and weep. Fine consolation, truly! methinks I hear you say. But unavailing as I know it is, weeping is, I assure you, my only consolation whenever my poor heart receives a wound. Write me quick, and pray scold me if you think me wrong. You know everything is welcome that comes from you.
Barras assures me if I marry the General, he will get him appointed commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy. This favor, though not yet granted, occasions some murmuring among Bonaparte’s brother officers. When speaking to me yesterday on the subject, the General said.—
“Do they think I cannot get forward without their patronage. One day or other they will all be too happy if I grant them mine. I have a good sword by my side, which will carry me on.”
What do you think of this self-confidence? Does it not savor of excessive vanity? A general of brigade to talk of patronizing the chiefs of the Government? It is very ridiculous! Yet I know not how it happens, his ambitious spirit sometimes wins upon me so far that I am almost tempted to believe in the practicability of any project he takes into his head—and who can foresee what he may attempt?
It is probable that, if it had not been for Barras, Josephine would not have consented, for many of her friends advised against the marriage. Barras urged it, however. He says in explanation, with the brutal frankness for which his memoirs are distinguished, that he was “tired and bored” with her. She, no doubt, felt that Barras’s protection was uncertain and that it would be better for her not to offend him.
At last Barras and Bonaparte between them overcame Josephine’s indecision, and on March 8, 1796, the marriage contract was signed. Barras and Tallien were the two chief witnesses at the civil ceremony which took place the next day. The religious marriage was dispensed with.
CHAPTER III
BONAPARTE GOES TO ITALY—JOSEPHINE AT MILAN—TRIUMPHAL TOUR IN ITALY—BONAPARTE LEAVES FOR EGYPT
Just a week before the marriage of Napoleon with Josephine he had been appointed general-in-chief of the Army of Italy, and two days after the marriage he left for his command. Josephine remained in Paris, at her home in the Rue Chantereine, a little relieved, probably, at the departure of her tempestuous lover. Certainly she was not sufficiently in love to be able to keep pace with the ardent letters which he sent her from every post on his route. She read them, to be sure; even showed them to her friends, pronouncing them drôle; but her answers equalled them neither in number nor in warmth. Napoleon’s suffering and reproaches and prayers disturbed her peace. She could not love like this. Soon he began to beg her to come to Italy. The campaign was well started; he was winning victories. There was no reason why she should not join him; or come at least to Nice—to Milan. “You will come,” he begs, “and quick. If you hesitate, if you delay, you will find me ill. Fatigue and your absence are too much for me.... Take wings, come—come!”
But Josephine did not want to leave Paris. Particularly now when she was reaping the first fruits of her young husband’s glory in an homage such as she had never known, but of which there is no doubt she had dreamed from childhood. Napoleon’s victories had driven the Parisians wild with joy, and they asked nothing better than to adore the wife of the hero of the campaign. Scarcely two months, in fact, had passed, after leaving Paris before Napoleon sent back, by his brother Joseph and his aide Junot, twenty-one flags taken from the enemy. They were received at a public session of the Directory. Josephine was present with Mme. Tallien, and when the two beautiful women, accompanied by Junot, left the Luxembourg, where the presentation had taken place, there was such a demonstration as Paris had not seen over a woman in many a day. “Look,” they cried, “it is his wife! Isn’t she beautiful! Long live General Bonaparte! Long live the Citizeness Bonaparte! Long live Notre Dame des Victoires!”
New triumphs followed, and to celebrate them there was held a grand fête on May 29. There were balls at the Luxembourg, gala nights at the theaters. And everywhere Josephine, the wife of the conquering general, was queen. And yet almost every night, when she returned from opera or ball, she found awaiting her a passionate appeal from Bonaparte to come to Italy. Several weeks she put him off, she pleaded the hardship of the trip, the dangers and discomforts she might have to undergo there, a hundred excuses; and Bonaparte, in reply, only begged the more fiercely that she come.
At last she could resist no longer, but she took no pains to conceal her sorrow at going. “Her chagrin was extreme, when she saw there was no longer any way of escaping,” Arnault says, “she thought more of what she was going to leave than what she was going to find. She would have given the palace at Milan which had been prepared for her, she would have given all the palaces of the world, for her house in the Rue Chantereine.... She started for Italy from the Luxembourg, where she had supped with some friends. Poor woman, she burst into tears and sobbed as if she was going to punishment—she who was going to reign.”
It was the end of June before Josephine arrived in Milan. The palace which awaited her was the princely home of the Duke de Serbelloni;—the society the choicest of Italy. She at once found herself literally living like a princess. Unhappily for her, however, there was no opportunity to remain long quietly at Milan and enjoy the pleasures open to her. Bonaparte was in active campaign—unable to stay but a couple of days after her arrival, and he soon began to beg that she join him in the field. At the end of July, she did go to Brescia, where she experienced a series of exciting adventures. The Austrians were pressing close on the French—closer than Napoleon realized; twice he and she narrowly escaped capture together; once she was under fire. Finally Bonaparte was obliged to send her, by way of Bologna and Ferrara to Lucques, a journey that she made in safety, but in tears.
Henceforth Josephine had an excellent reason for not joining her husband in the field. And Napoleon did not ask her to do so. All he asked now was letters, letters, letters. “Your health and your face are never out of my mind. I cannot be at peace until your letters are received. I wait them impatiently. You cannot conceive my unrest.” And again, “I do not love you at all; on the contrary, I detest you. You are a wretched, awkward, stupid little thing. You do not write me any more at all; you do not love your husband. You know the pleasure that your letters give me, and yet write me not more than six lines and that by chance. What are you doing all day long, Madame? But seriously, I am very much disturbed, my dear, at not hearing from you. Write me four pages quickly of those kind of things which fill my heart with pleasure.” A few days later he writes, “No letters from you. Truly that disturbs me. I am told you are well and that you have even been to Lake Como. I look impatiently every day for the courier who will bring me news of you.” And again, “I write you very often, my dear, and you write me so rarely.” And so it went on through the entire summer and fall of 1796. While she received at Milan the honors due the wife of a conqueror who held the fate of states in his hands, he in the field exhausted himself in a frenzied struggle for victory—not victory for himself, so he told Josephine, and so for a time, perhaps, he persuaded himself; but victory because it pleased her that he win it; honor because she set store by it; otherwise, said he, “I should leave all to throw myself at your feet.”
All this impetuous passion wearied Josephine more and more. No response was awakened in her heart. That she was proud of his love, there is no doubt. She told everybody of his devotion, as well she might: it was her passport to power. But she could not answer it in kind, and she found excuses for her neglect in her health, which was not good at this time, and in the social requirements of her brilliant and conspicuous position, and frequently, too, in the fact that the life at Milan, gay as it was, did not please her. She was homesick for Paris. “Monsieur de Serbelloni will tell you, my dear aunt,” she wrote early in September, “how I have been received in Italy, fêted wherever I have gone, all the princes of Italy entertaining me, even the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Ah, well! I would rather be a simple private individual in France; I do not like the honors of this country, I am bored to death. It is true that my health does much to make me sad; I am not well at all. If happiness could bring health, I ought to be well. I have the kindest husband that one could possibly find; I have not time to want anything; my will is his; he is on his knees before me all day long, as if I were a divinity. One could not have a better husband. M. de Serbelloni will tell you how much I am loved; he writes often to my children and is very fond of them.”