Empress Josephine: An Historical Sketch of the Days of Napoleon Part 23

Ponte-Coulant had for some time followed with attention the course of the young general, whose military talents and warlike reputation had filled him with astonishment. He had especially been surprised at the plan for the conduct of the war and the conquest of Italy which Bonaparte had laid before the war committee. Now that Ponte-Coulant had been promoted to be chief of the war department, he sent for General Bonaparte, and attached him to the topographic committee, where the plans of campaigns were decided and the movements of each separate corps delineated.

The forgotten one, doomed to inactivity, General Napoleon Bonaparte, now arose from his obscurity, and before him again opened life, the world, and fame's pathway, which was to lead him up to a throne. But the envy and jealousy of the party-men of the Convention ever threw obstacles before him on his glorious course, and the war-scheme which he now unfolded to the committee for the campaign did not receive the approbation of the successor of Ponte-Coulant in the war department, and it was thrust aside. A new political crisis was needed to place in the hands of Napoleon the command of the army, the ruling authority over France, and this crisis was at hand.

Paris, diseased, still bleeding in its innermost life with a thousand wounds, was devoured by hunger. The unfortunate people, wretched from want and pain, during many past years, were now driven to despair. The political party leaders understood but too well how to take advantage of this, and to prey upon it. The royalists were busy instilling into the people's minds the idea that the return of the Bourbons would restore to miserable France peace and happiness. The terrorists told the people that the Convention was the sole obstacle to their rest and to their peace, that it was necessary to scatter it to the winds, and to re-establish the Const.i.tution of 1793. The whole population of Paris was divided and broken into factions, struggling one against the other with infuriated pa.s.sions. The royalists, strengthened by daily accessions of emigrants, who, under fict.i.tious names and with false pa.s.sports, returned to Paris to claim the benefit of the milder laws pa.s.sed in their favor, const.i.tuted a formidable power in that city. Whole sections were devoted to them, and were secretly supplied by them with arms and provisions, so as finally to be prepared to act against the Convention.

An occasion soon presented itself.

The Convention had, through eleven of its committee members, prepared a new const.i.tution, and had laid it before the people for adoption or rejection, according to the majority of votes. The whole country, with the exception of Paris, was in favor of this new const.i.tution--she alone in her popular a.s.semblies rejected it, declared the Convention dissolved, and the armed sections arose to make new elections. The Convection declared these a.s.semblies to be illegal, and ordered their dissolution. The armed sections made resistance, congregated together, and by force opposed the troops of the Convention--the National Guards--commanded by General Menou. On the 12th Vendemiaire all Paris was under arms again; barricades were thrown up by the people, who swore to die in their defence sooner than to submit to the will of the Convention; the noise of drums and trumpets was heard in every street; all the horrors and cruelties of a civil war once more filled the capital of the revolution, and the city was drunk with blood!

The people fought with the courage of despair, pressed on victoriously, and won from General Menou a few streets; whole battalions of the National Guards abandoned the troops of the Convention and went over to the sections. General Menou found himself in so dangerous a position as to be forced to conclude an armistice until the next day with the Section Lepelletier, which was opposed to him, up to which time the troops on either side were to suspend operations.

The Section Lepelletier declared itself at once en permanence, sent her delegates to all the other sections, and called upon "the sovereign people, whose rights the Convention wished to usurp," to make a last and decisive struggle.

The Convention found itself in the most alarming position; it trembled for its very existence, and already in fancy saw again the days of terror, the guillotine rising and claiming for its first victims the heads of the members of the Convention. A pallid fear overspread all faces as constantly fresh news of the advance of the sections reached them, when General Menou sent news of the concluded armistice.

At this moment a pale young man rushed into the hall of session, and with glowing eloquence and persuasive manner entreated the Convention not to accept the armistice, not to give time to the sections to increase their strength, nor to recognize them as a hostile power to war against the government.

This pale young man--whose impa.s.sioned language filled the minds of all his hearers with animosity against General Menou, and with fresh courage and desire to fight--was Napoleon Bonaparte.

After he had spoken, other representatives rushed to the tribune, to make propositions to the a.s.sembly, all their motions converging to the same end--all desired to have General Menou placed under arrest, and Bonaparte appointed in his place, and intrusted with the defence of the Convention and of the legislative power against the people.

The a.s.sembly accepted this motion, and appointed Bonaparte commanding officer of the troops of the Convention, and, for form's sake, named Barras, president of the Convention, commander-in-chief.

Bonaparte accepted the commission; and now, at last, after so much waiting, so many painful months of inactivity, he found himself called to action; he stood again at the head of an army, however small it might be, and could again lift up the sword as the signal for the march to the fight.

It is true this fight had a sad, horrible purpose; it was directed against the people, against the sections which declared themselves to be the committee of the sovereign people, and that they were fighting the holy fight of freedom against those who usurped their rights.

General Bonaparte had refused to go to Vendee, because he wished not to fight against his own countrymen, and could not take part in a civil war; but now, at this hour of extreme peril, he placed himself in opposition to the people's sovereignty, and a.s.sumed command over the troops of the Convention, whose mission it was to subdue the people.

Every thing now a.s.sumed a more earnest att.i.tude; during the night the newly-appointed commanding officer sent three hundred cha.s.seurs, under Murat, to bring to Paris forty cannon from the park of artillery in Sablons, and, when the morning of the 13th Vendemiaire began to dawn, the pieces were already in position in the court of the Tuileries and pointed against the people. Besides which, General Bonaparte had taken advantage of the night to occupy all the important points and places, and to arm them; even into the hall of session of the Convention he ordered arms and ammunition to be brought, that the representatives might defend themselves, in case they were pressed upon by the people.

As the sun of the 13th Vendemiaire rose over Paris, a terrible street-fight began--the fight of the sovereign people against the Convention. It was carried on by both sides with the utmost bitterness and fierceness, the sections rus.h.i.+ng with fanatic courage, with all the energy of hatred, against these soldiers who dared slay their brothers and bind their liberty in chains; the soldiers of the Convention fought with all the bitterness which the consciousness of their hated position instilled into them.

The cannon thundered in every street and mingled their sounds with the cries of rage from the sectionnaires--the howlings of the women, the whiz of the howitzers, the loud clangs of the bells, which incessantly called the people to arms. Streams of blood flowed again through the streets; everywhere, near the scattered barricades, near the houses captured by storm, lay b.l.o.o.d.y corpses; everywhere resounded the cries of the dying, the shrieks and groans of the wounded, the wild shouts of the combatants. In the Church of St. Roche, and in the Theatre Francaise, the sectionnaires, driven from the neighboring streets by the troops of General Bonaparte, had gathered together and endeavored to defend these places with the courage of despair. But the howitzers of Bonaparte soon scattered them, and the contest was decided.

The sections were defeated; the people, conquered by the Convention, had to recognize its authority; they were no more the sovereigns of France; they had found a ruler before whom they must bow.

This ruler was yet called the Convention, but behind the Convention stood another ruler--General Bonaparte!

It was he who had defeated the people, who had secured the authority to the Convention, and it was therefore natural that it should be thankful and exhibit its grat.i.tude. General Bonaparte, in acknowledgment for the great services done to his country, was by the Convention appointed commander-in-chief of the army of the interior, and thus suddenly he saw himself raised from degrading obscurity to pomp and influence, surrounded by a brilliant staff, installed in a handsome palace by virtue of his office as chief officer, ent.i.tled to and justified in maintaining an establishment wherein to represent worthily the dignity of his new position.

The 13th Vendemiaire, which dethroned the sovereign people, brought General Bonaparte a step nearer to the throne.

CHAPTER XX. THE WIDOW JOSEPHINE BEAUHARNAIS.

Meanwhile Josephine had pa.s.sed the first months of her newly-obtained freedom in quiet contentment with her children in Fontainebleau, at the house of her father-in-law. Her soul, bowed down by so much misery and pain, needed quietness and solitude to allow her wounds to cease bleeding and to heal; her heart, which had experienced so much anguish and so many deceptions, needed to rest on the bosom of her children and her relatives, so as to be quickened into new life. Only in the solitude and stillness of Fontainebleau did she feel well and satisfied; every other distraction, every interruption of this quiet, orderly existence brought on a nervous trembling, which mastered her whole body, as if some other adversity was about to break upon her. The days of terror which she had pa.s.sed in Paris, and especially the days she had outlived in prison, were ever fresh before her mind, and tormented her with their reminiscences alike in her vigils and in her dreams.

She wanted to hear nothing of the world's events, nothing from Paris, the mention of which place filled her with fear and horror; and with tears in her eyes she entreated her father-in-law to omit all mention of the political changes and revolutions which took place there.

But, alas! the politics from which Josephine fled, to which she closed her ears, rushed upon her against her will--they came to her in the shape of want and privation.

Josephine, who wished to have nothing more to do with the affairs of this world, learned, through the deprivations which she had to endure, the want to which she and her family were exposed, that the world had not yet been pushed back into the old grooves, out of which the revolution had so violently lifted it up; that the republic yet exercised a despotic authority, and was not prepared to return to the heirs the property of the victims of the guillotine! The income and property of General Beauharnais had all been confiscated by the republic, for he had been executed as a state criminal, and the procedure had this in common with the ordinary actions of the government, that it never returned what it had once usurped. Even Josephine's father-in-law, as well as her aunt--Madame de Renaudin, who, after her husband's death, had been married to the Marquis de Beauharnais--had both in the revolutionary storms lost all their property, and saw themselves reduced to the last extremity. They lived from day to day with the greatest economy, upon the smallest means, and flattered themselves with the hope that justice would be done to the innocent victims of the revolution; that at last to the widow and children of the murdered General Beauharnais his income and property would be returned.

Another hope remained to Josephine: reliance upon her relatives, especially upon her mother in Martinique. She had written to her as soon as she had obtained her liberty; she had entreated her mother, who had been a widow for two years, to rent all her property in Martinique, and to come to France, and at her daughter's side to enjoy a few quiet years of domestic happiness.

But this hope also was to be destroyed, for the revolution in Martinique had committed the same devastations as in France, and the burning houses of their masters had been the bonfires whose flames were sent up to heaven by the newly-freed slaves in the name of the republic and of the rights of man. Madame Tascher de la Pagerie had experienced the same fate as all the planters in Martinique; her house and outbuildings had been burnt, her plantations destroyed, and a long time would be required before the fields could again be made to produce a harvest. Until then, Madame Tascher would be sorely limited in her means, and, if she did not succeed in selling some of her property and raising funds, would be without the money necessary to bring under cultivation the remnant of her large plantation. She was, therefore, not immediately prepared to supply her daughter with any considerable a.s.sistance, and Josephine endured the anguish of seeing not only herself and children, but also her dear mother, suffer through want and privation.

To the need of gold to procure bare necessaries, was soon added the very lack of them. Famine, with all its horrors, was at hand; the people were clamoring for food, and the land-owners as well as the rich were suffering from the want of that prime necessary of life-bread! The Convention had adopted no measures to satisfy the demands of the howling populace, and it had to remain contented with making accessible to all such provisions as were in the land. One law, therefore, ordered all land-owners to deliver to the state their stores of meal; a second law prohibited any person from buying more than one pound of bread on the same day. The greatest delicacy in those days of common wretchedness was white bread, and there were many families that for a long time were unable to procure this luxury.

Josephine herself had with many others to endure this privation: the costly white loaf was beyond her reach. In her depressed and sad lot the unfortunate widowed viscountess remained in possession of a treasure for which many of the wealthy and high-born longed in vain, and which neither gold nor wealth could procure--Josephine possessed friends, true, devoted friends, who forsook her not in the day of need, but stood the more closely at her side, helping and loving.

Among these friends were, above all, Madame Dumoulin and M. Emery.

Madame Dumoulin, the wife of a wealthy purveyor of the republican army, was at heart a true royalist, and had made it her mission, as much as was within her power, to a.s.sist with her means the most dest.i.tute from whom the revolution had taken their family joys and property. She aided with money and clothing the unfortunate emigrants, who, as prominent and influential friends of the king and of Old France, had abandoned their country, and who now, as nameless, wretched beggars, returned home to beg of New France the privilege at least to hunger and starve, and at last to die in their motherland. Madame Dumoulin had always an open house for those aristocrats and ci-devants who had the courage not to emigrate and to bow their despised heads to all the fluctuations of the republic, and had remained in France, though deprived by the republic of their ancestral names, property, and rank. Those aristocrats who had not migrated found a friendly reception in the house of the witty and amiable Madame Dumoulin, and twice a week she gathered those friends of the ancient regime to a dinner, which was prepared with all the luxury of former days, and which offered to her friends, besides material enjoyment, the pleasures of an agreeable and attractive company.

Among Madame Dumoulin's friends who never failed to be present at these dinners was Josephine de Beauharnais, of whom Madame Dumoulin said she was the sunbeam of her drawing-room, for she warmed and vitalized all hearts. But this sunbeam had not the power to bring forth out of the unfruitful soil of the fatherland a few ears of wheat to turn its flour into white bread. As every one was allowed to buy bread only according to the numbers in the household, Madame Dumoulin could not give to her guests at dinner any white bread, and on her cards of invitation was the then usual form, "You are invited to bring a loaf of white bread."

But it was beyond the means of the poor Viscountess de Beauharnais to fulfil this invitation; her purse was not sufficient to afford her twice a week the luxury of white bread. Madame Dumoulin, who knew this, came kindly to the rescue of Josephine's distress, and entreated her not to trouble herself with bringing bread, but to allow her to procure it for her friend.

Josephine accepted this offer with tears of emotion, and she never forgot the goodness and kindness of Madame Dumoulin. In the days of her highest glory she remembered her, and once, when empress, radiant with jewels and ornaments of gold, as she stood in the midst of her court, related with a bewitching smile, to the ladies around her, that there was a time when she would have given a year of her life to possess but one of those jewels, not to adorn herself therewith, but to sell it, so as to buy bread for her children, and that in those days the excellent Madame Dumoulin had been a benefactress to her, and that she had received at her hands the bread of charity. [Footnote: "Memoires sur l'Imperatrice Josephine," par Mad. Ducrest, chap x.x.xVI.]

The same abiding friends.h.i.+p was shown to Josephine by M. Emery, a banker who had a considerable business in Dunkirk, and who for many years had been in mercantile relations with the family of Tascher de la Pagerie in Martinique. Madame de la Pagerie had every year sent him the produce of her sugar plantations, and he had attended to the sale to the largest houses in Germany. He knew better than any one else the pecuniary circ.u.mstances of the Pagerie family; he knew that, if at present Madame de la Pagerie could not repay his advanced sums, her plantations would soon produce a rich harvest, and even now be a sufficient security. M.

Emery was therefore willing to a.s.sist the daughter of Madame Tascher de la Pagerie, and several times he advanced to Josephine considerable sums which she had drawn upon her mother.

The cares of every-day life, its physical necessities, lifted Josephine out of the sad melancholy in which she had lulled her sick, wounded heart, within the solitude of Fontainebleau. She must not settle down in this inactive twilight, nor wrap herself up in the gloomy gray veil of widowhood! Life had still claims upon her; it called to her through her children's voices, for whom she had a future to provide, as well as through the voice of her own youth, which she must not intrust hopelessly to the gloomy Fontainebleau.

And the young mother dared not and wanted not to close her ears to these calls; she arose from her supineness, and courageously resolved to begin anew life's battle, and to claim her share from the enjoyments and pleasures of this world.

She first, by the advice of M. Emery, undertook a journey to Hamburg, to make some arrangements with the rich and highly respectable banking-house of Mathiesen and Sissen. Mathiesen, the banker, who had married a niece of Madame de Genlis, had always shown the greatest hospitality to all Frenchmen who had applied to him, and he had a.s.sisted them with advice and deeds. To him Josephine appealed, at the request of M. Emery, so as to procure a safe opportunity to send letters to her mother in Martinique, and also to obtain from him funds on bills drawn upon her mother.

M. Mathiesen met her wishes with a generous pleasure, and through him Josephine received sufficient sums of money to protect her from further embarra.s.sments and anxieties, at least until her mother, who was on the eve of selling a portion of her plantation, could send her some money.

On her return from her business-journey to Hamburg, as she was no longer a poor widow without means, she adopted the courageous resolution of leaving her asylum and returning to dangerous and deserted Paris, there to prepare for her son an honorable future, and endeavor to procure for her daughter an education suited to her rank and capacities.

At the end of the year 1795, Josephine returned with her two children to Paris, which one year before she had left so sorrowfully and so dispirited.

What changes had been wrought during this one year! How the face of things had been altered! The revolution had bled to death. The thirteenth Vendemiaire had scattered to the winds the seditious elements of revolution, and the republic was beginning quietly and peacefully to grow into stature. The Convention, with its Mountain, its terrorists, its Committee of Safety, its persecutions and executions, had outlived its power, which it had consigned to the pages of history with so many tears and so much blood. In a strange contradiction with its own b.l.o.o.d.y deeds, it celebrated the last day of its existence by a law which, as a farewell to the thousand corpses it had sacrificed to the revolution, it had printed on its gory brow. On the day of its dissolution the Convention gave to France this last law: "Capital punishment is forever abolished." [Footnote: Norvins, "Histoire de Napoleon," vol. i., p. 82.]

With this farewell kiss, this love-salutation to the France of the future, to the new self-informing France, the Convention dissolved itself, and in its stead came the Council of Elders, the Council of Five Hundred, and lastly the Directory, composed of five members, among whom had been elected the more eminent members of the Convention, namely, Barras and Carnot.

Josephine's first movement in Paris was to find the lovely friend whom she made in the Carmelite prison, and to whom she in some measure owed her life, to visit Therese de Fontenay and see if the heart of the beautiful, celebrated woman had in its days of happiness and power retained its remembrances of those of wretchedness and mortal fears.

Therese de Fontenay was now the wife of Tallien, who, elected to the Council of the Five Hundred, continued to play an influential and important part, and therefore had his court of flatterers and time-serving friends as well as any ruling prince. His house was one of the most splendid in Paris; the feasts and banquets which took place there reminded one, by their extravagant magnificence, of the days of ancient Rome, and that this remembrance might still be more striking, ladies in the rich, costly costumes of patrician matrons of ancient Rome appeared at those festivities not unworthy of a Lucullus. Madame Tallien--in the ample robe of wrought gold of a Roman empress, shod with light sandals, from which issued the beautiful naked feet, and the toes adorned with costly rings, her exquisitely moulded arms ornamented with ma.s.sive gold bracelets; her short curly hair fastened together by a gold bandelet, which rose over the forehead in the shape of a diadem, bejewelled with precious diamonds; the mantle of purple, fringed with gold and placed on the shoulders--was in this costume of such a wonderful beauty, that men gazed at her with astonishment and women with envy.

And this beautiful woman, often wors.h.i.+pped and adored, though sometimes slandered, had amid her triumphs kept a faithful remembrance of the past. She received Josephine with the affection of a true friend. In her generosity she allowed her no time to proffer any request, but came forward herself with offers to intercede for her friend, and to use all the means at her disposal, omitting nothing that would help Josephine to recover her fortune, her lost property. With all the eagerness of true love she took the arm of her friend and led her to Tallien, and with the enchanting smile and att.i.tude of a commanding princess she told him that he must help Josephine to become happy again, that every thing he could do for her would be rewarded by an increasing love; that if he did not do justice to Josephine, she would punish him by her anger and coldness.

Tallien listened with complacency to the praiseworthy commands of his wors.h.i.+pped Therese, and promised to use all his influence to have justice done to the will of the sacrificed General de Beauharnais. He himself accompanied Josephine to Barras, that she might present her application to him personally and request at his hands rest.i.tution of her property. She was received by Barras, as well as by the other four directors, with the greatest politeness; each promised to attend to her case and to return to the widow and to the children of Alexandre de Beauharnais the property which had been so unjustly taken from them.