Queen Hortense

Introduction

Hortense Eugenie de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s stepchild and sister-in-law, Queen of Holland and mother of Napoleon III. and of his adviser, the Duke de Morny, well deserves a prominent place in the gallery of pictures of men and women whom the Revolution brought forth and the Empire raised to eminence. In the men and women of that period we see the same faults. Hortense de Beauharnais, notwithstanding Louisa Miihlback’s eulogies, shares her mother’s tarnished reputation, which was also the reputation of Madame Tallien and of Napoleon’s own sisters. Her relations to General Flahault are too notorious to be ignored ; history has given a place to their offspring, Morny. Moreover, Hortense, like her mother, amply atoned for her misdeeds by her love for her children, and her stanch friendship for Napoleon in the days when even his brothers deserted him.

Born on April 10, 1783, at Paris, Hortense de Beauharnais was educated by Madame Oampan, and married, at her mother’s special wish, to Napoleon’s third

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brother, Louis, in 1802. The marriage was distasteful to both, but Napoleon was the unquestioned ruler of his own family, and in this instance he seconded, perhaps unwillingly, Josephine’s machinations. Louis Bonaparte (born on September 2, 1778) had been educated at the artillery school of Chalons, where he had imbibed royalistic ideas, and had accompanied Napoleon on his campaigns in Italy and Egypt. In 1806 the emperor forced the Dutch to offer the royal dignity to him, and commanded him to accept it. Louis obeyed, much against his wishes, for he well saw that he would be unable to serve his kingdom as a conscientious ruler should, and that, as a matter of fact, he would be nothing more than the emperor’s governor. He found his kingdom in a state of utter commercial collapse. Napoleon’s wars with England had robbed her of her colonies, her fleets, her welfare ; smuggling was the only form of trade still possible ; the national debt grew at an alarming rate, and in 1809 the English landed in the island of Walcheren — an expedition that was defeated by the climate rather than the French and Dutch soldiers. Louis tried hard to protect his people against the emperor’s ruinous policy. He enforced the edicts against trade with England as little as possible, sought to benefit his people in every possible way, but succeeded merely in averting national bankruptcy. Exasperated by his resistance, Napoleon forced him to abdicate on July 1, 1810, and made Holland a part of the Empire. Louis adopted the title of Count of Saint- Leu,

INTRODUCTION.

V and went to live in Gratz ; in 1813 lie repeatedly offered his services to the emperor, on condition, however, of the restitution of his kingdom; but in 1814, when the house of Orange had been raised to the throne, he went to Paris and offered his aid unconditionally. Napoleon, however, treated him coolly, and in the following year Louis declined his invitations to come to Paris. After obtaining a divorce from Hortense, Louis continued to live in Florence. He died on July 25, 1846, in Livorno, after the escape of his son from the fortress of Ham.

After her husband’s abdication and departure for Gratz, Hortense returned to Paris, where, notwithstanding his divorce and second marriage, she continued to live on a footing of great intimacy with Napoleon. In 1814 she was the only member of the family to stay in Paris. After the Hundred Hays she went to Switzerland, where she passed most of the remaining years of her life, spending her winters, however, in Italy. She visited Louis Philippe in Paris, and died on October 5, 1837. Her remains were buried at Eueil, by the side of her mother.

Queen Hortense ends the series of volumes dealing with the Napoleonic era. It completes the picture till Waterloo, and carries it on through the reign of Louis XVIII. — who was not overwise, yet wiser than all his courtiers, in an indolent, cynical kind of way — to the youth of Louis Napoleon, the conspirator and political dreamer who, amid circumstances that seemed to vi

QUEEN HOETENSE.

put unsurmountable obstacles in bis way, was to re-establish tbe throne of the great emperor and to rule from it for nearly twenty years the destinies of Europe. This series presents the fortunes of the house of Prussia during Napoleon’s reign ; it shows the rise of the sovereign people in Germany, the growth of their power, and its assertion in 1813 ; it gives a picture of the patron saint of German patriotism in those days, Queen Louisa, and of its martyrs, Palm, Piickler, Schill, and Staps, as well as of its heroes, Stein, Hardenberg, Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, York, Bliicher ; nor are the minor lights forgotten, such as Koerner, the poet-warrior who was to fall so early in the war. The volumes devoted to Josephine and Hortense show a different aspect of the period ; and throughout, with the exception of the author’s indefensible assumption that both the empress and her daughter were strictly virtuous women, the facts of history are strictly adhered to. While overlapping each other of necessity, these volumes are singularly free from repetition ; therefore we have what# is practically but one continuous history of continental Europe, from the days of the Great Elector and Louis XIY. to those of Waterloo and the Holy Alliance, viewed principally from the point of view of Prussian politics, but chronicled with strictest impartiality.

Book I. Days Of Childhood And Of The Revolution

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — Days of Childhood 1

II. — The Prophecy 12

III. — Consequences of the Revolution 22

IY. — General Bonaparte 32

Y. — The Marriage 39

VI. — Bonaparte in Italy 46

VII. — Vicissitudes of Destiny 50

VIII. — Bonaparte’s Return from Egypt 57

Book II. The Queen Of Holland

I. — A First Love 68

II. — Louis Bonaparte and Duroc 75

III. — Consul and King 84

IV. — The Calumny 92

V. — King or Emperor 103

VI. — Napoleon’s Heir 114

VII. — Premonitions . . 121

VIII.— The Divorce 125

IX.— The King of Holland 131

X. — Junot, the Duke d’Abrantes 140

XI.— Louis Napoleon as a Vender of Violets . . . 147

XII.— The Days of Misfortune 154

XIII.— The Allies in Paris 162

CONTENTS.

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CHAPTER PAGE

XIY. — Correspondence between the Queen and Louise de

Cochelet 169

XV. — Queen Hortense and the Emperor Alexander . . 182

XVI.— The New Uncles 186

XVII. — Death of the Empress Josephine 189

Book III. The Restoration

I. — The Return of the Bourbons ....

II. — The Bourbons and the Bonapartes . . .

III. — Madame de Stael

IV. — Madame de Stael’s Return to Paris

V. — Madame de Stael’s Visit to Queen Hortense

VI.— The Old and New Era

VII.— King Louis XVIII

VIII. — The Drawing-room of the Duchess of St. Leu .

IX. — The Burial of Louis XVI. and his Wife

X. — Napoleon’s Return from Elba ....

XI. — Louis XVIII.’s Departure and Napoleon’s Arrival

XII. — The Hundred Days

XIII. — Napoleon’s Last Adieu

Book IV

THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.

I.— The Banishment of the Duchess of St. Leu . . .292

II. — Louis Napoleon as a Child 299

III. — The Revolution of 1830 307

IV. — The Revolution in Rome and the Sons of Hortense . 313

V. — The Death of Prince Napoleon . 321

VI.— The Flight from Italy 329

VII. — The Pilgrimage 338

VIII. — Louis Philippe and the Duchess of St. Leu . . 347

IX. — The Departure of the Duchess from Paris . . . 354

X. — Pilgrimage through France 360

XI. — Fragment from the Memoirs of Queen Hortense . . 368

XII. — The Pilgrim 375

XIII. — Conclusion ......... 381

QUEEN HORTENSE.

Chapter I. Days Of Childhood

“ One moment of bliss is not too dearly bought with death,” says our great German poet, and he may be right ; but a moment of bliss purchased with a long lifetime full of trial and suffering is far too costly.

And when did it come for her, this “ moment of bliss ? ” When could Hortense Beauharnais, in speaking of herself, declare, “ I am happy ? Now, let suffering and sorrow come upon me, if they will ; I have tasted felicity, and, in the memories it has left me, it is imperishable and eternal ! ”

Much, very much, had this daughter of an empress and mother of an emperor to endure.

In her earliest youth she had been made familiar with misfortune and with tears ; and in her later life, as maiden, wife, and mother, she was not spared, l

QUEEN HORTENSE.

A touchingly-beautiful figure amid the drama of the Napoleonic days was this gentle and yet high-spirited queen, who, when she had descended from the throne and had ceased to be a sovereign, exhausted and weary of life, found refuge at length in the grave, yet still survived among us as a queen — no longer, indeed, a queen of nations, but the Queen of Flowers.

The flowers have retained their remembrance of Josephine’s beautiful daughter ; they did not, like so many of her own race, deny her when she was no longer the daughter of the all-powerful emperor, but merely the daughter of the “ exile.” Among the flowers the lovely Hortense continued to live on, and Gavarni, the great poet of the floral realm, has reared to her, as Hortensia, the Flower Queen, an enchanting monument, in his “ Fleurs Animees Upon a mound of Ilortensias rests the image of the Queen Hortense, and, in the far distance, like the limnings of a half-forgotten dream, are seen the towers and domes of Paris. Farther in the foreground lies the grave of Hortense, with the carved likeness of the queenly sister of the flowers. Loneliness reigns around the spot, but above it, in the air, hovers the imperial eagle. The imperial mantle, studded with its golden bees, undulates behind him, like the train of a comet ; the dark-red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with the golden cross, hangs around his neck, and in his beak he bears a full-blooming branch of the crown imperial.

It is a page of world-renowned history that this charming picture of Gavarni’s conjures up before us —

DAYS OF CHILDHOOD.

an historical pageant that sweeps by ns in wondrous fantastic forms of light and shadow, when we scan the life of Queen Hortense- with searching gaze, and meditate upon her destiny. She had known all the grandeur and splendor of earth, and had seen them all crumble again to dust. No, not all ! Her ballads and poems remain, for genius needs no diadem to be immortal.

When Hortense ceased to be a queen by the grace of Napoleon, she none the less continued to be a poetess “ by the grace of God.” Her poems are sympathetic and charming, full of tender plaintiveness and full of impassioned warmth, which, however, in no instance oversteps the bounds of womanly gentleness. Her musical compositions, too, are equally melodious and attractive to the heart. Who does not know the song, “ Va fen, Guerrier ,” which Hortense wrote and set to music, and then, at Napoleon’s request, converted into a military march? The soldiers of France once left their native land, in those days, to the sound of this march, to carry the French eagles to Russia ; and to the same warlike harmony they have marched forth more recently, toward the same distant destination. This ballad, written by Hortense, survived. At one time everybody sang it, joyously, aloud. Then, when the Bourbons had returned, the scarred and crippled veterans of the Invalides hummed it under their breath, w T hile they whispered secretly to each other of the glory of La Belle France, as of a beautiful dream of youth, now gone forever.

To-day, that song rings out with power again through

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QUEEN HORTENSE.

France, and mounts in jubilee to the summit of the column on the Place Vendome. The bronze visage of the emperor seems to melt into a smile as these tremulous billows of melody go sweeping around his brow, and the Hortensias on the queen’s grave raise dreamingly their heads of bloom, in which the dews of heaven, or the tears of the departed one, glisten like rarest gems, and seem to look forth lovingly and listen to this ditty, which now for France has won so holy a significance — holy because it is the master -chant of a religion which all men and all nations should revere — the “ religion of our memories.” Thus, this “ Va fen, G nervier” which France now sings, resounds over the grave of the queen, like a salute of honor over the last resting-place of some brave soldier.

She had much to contend with — this hapless and amiable queen — but she ever proved firm, and ever retained one kind of courage that belongs to woman — the courage to smile through her tears. Her father perished on the scaffold; her mother, the doubly-dethroned empress, died of a broken heart ; her step-father, the Emperor Napoleon, pined away, liked a caged lion, on a lone rock in the sea ! Her whole family — all the dethroned kings and queens — went wandering about as fugitives and pariahs, banished from their country, and scarcely wringing from the clemency of those to whom they had been clement, a little spot of earth, where, far from the bustle and intercourse of the world, they might live in quiet obscurity, with their great recollections and their mighty sorrows. Their past lay behind them, like a glit-

DAYS OF CHILDHOOD.

tering fairy tale, which no one now believed ; and only the present seemed, to men and nations, a welcome reality, which they, with envenomed stings, were eager to brand upon the foreheads of the dethroned Napoleon race.

Yet, despite all these sorrows and discouragements, Hortensia had the mental strength not to hate her fellowbeings, but, on the contrary, to teach her children to love them and do good to them. The heart of the dethroned queen bled from a thousand wounds, but she did not allow these wounds to stiffen into callousness, nor her heart to harden under the broad scars of sorrow that had ceased to bleed. She cherished her bereavements and her wounds, and kept them open with her tears ; but, even while she suffered measureless woes, it solaced her heart to relieve the woes and dry the tears of others. Thus was her life a constant charity ; and when she died she could, like the Empress Josephine, say of herself, “ I have wept much, but never have I made others weep.”

Hortense was the daughter of the Yiscount de Beauharnais, who, against the wishes of his relatives, married the beautiful Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie, a young creole lady of Martinique. This alliance, which love alone had brought about, seemed destined, nevertheless, to no happy issue. While both were young, and both inexperienced, passionate, and jealous, both lacked the strength and energy requisite to restrain the wild impulses of their fiery temperaments within the cool and tranquil bounds of quiet married life. The viscount was too young to be not merely a lover and tender husband,

QUEEN HORTENSE.

but also a sober counsellor and cautious instructor in the difficult after-day of life ; and Josephine was too innocent, too artless, too sportive and genial, to avoid all those things that might give to the watchful and hostile family of her husband an opportunity for ill-natured suspicions, which were whispered in the viscount’s ear as cruel certainties. It may readily be conceived, then, that such a state of things soon led to violent scenes and bitter grief. Josephine was too beautiful and amiable not to attract attention and admiration wherever she went, and she was not yet llasee and hackneyed enough to take no pleasure in the court thus paid to her, and the admiration so universally shown her, nor even to omit doing her part to win them. But, while she was naive and innocent at heart, she required of her husband that these trifling outside coquetries should not disquiet him nor render him distrustful, and that he should repose the most unshaken confidence in her. Her pride revolted against his suspicions, as did his jealousy against her seeming frivolity ; and both became quite willing, at last, to separate, notwithstanding the love they really bore each other at the bottom of their hearts, had not their children rendered such a separation impossible. These children were a son, Eugene, and a daughter, Hortense, four years younger than the boy. Both parents loved these children with passionate tenderness ; and often when one of the stormy scenes at which we have hinted took place in the presence of the young people, an imploring word from Eugene or a caress from little Hortense would suffice to reconcile their father and mother, whose anger, after all, was but the result of excessive attachment.

But these domestic broils became more violent with time, and the moment arrived when Eugene was no longer there to stand by his little sister in her efforts to soothe the irritation of her parents. The viscount had sent Eugene, who was now seven years of age, to a boarding-school; and little Ilortense, quite disheartened by the absence of her brother, had no longer the means or the courage to allay the quarrels that raged between her parents, but would escape in terror and dismay, when they broke out, to some lonely corner, and there weep bitterly over a misfortune, the extent of which her poor little childish heart could not yet estimate.

In the midst of this gloomy and stormy period, the young viscountess received a letter from Martinique. It was from her mother, Madame Tascher de la Pagerie, who vividly depicted to her daughter the terrors of her lonely situation in her huge, silent residence, where there was no one around her but servants and slaves, whose singularly altered and insubordinate manner had, of late, alarmed the old lady, and filled her with secret apprehensions for the future. She, therefore, besought her daughter to come to her, and live with her, so that she might cheer the last few years of her mother’s existence with the bright presence of her dazzling youth.

Josephine accepted this appealing letter from her mother as a hint from destiny ; and, weary of her domestic wrangles, and resolved to end them forever, she took

QUEEN HORTENSE.

her little daughter, Hortense, then scarcely four years old, and with her sailed away from France, to seek beyond the ocean and in her mother’s arms the new happiness of undisturbed tranquillity.

But, at that juncture, tranquillity had fled the world. The mutterings and moanings of the impending tempest could be heard on all sides. A subterranean rumbling was audible throughout all lands ; a dull thundering and outcry, as though the solid earth were about to change into one vast volcano — one measureless crater — that would dash to atoms, and entomb, with its blazing lavastreams and fiery cinder-showers, the happiness and peace of all humanity. And, finally, this terrific crater did, indeed, open and hurl destruction and death on all sides, over the whole world, uprooting, with demoniac fury, entire races and nations, and silencing the merry laugh and harmless jest with the overpowering echoes of its awful voice !

This volcano was the revolution. In France, the first and most fearful explosion of this terrific crater occurred, but the whole world shook and heaved with it, and, on all sides, the furious masses from beneath overflowed on the surface, seeking to reverse the order of things and place the lowest where the highest had been. Even away in Martinique this social earthquake was felt, which had already, in France, flung out the bloody guillotine from its relentless crater. This guillotine had become the altar of the so-called enfranchisement of nations, and upon this altar the intoxicated, unthinking

DAYS OF CHILDHOOD.

masses offered up to their new idol those who, until then, had been their lords and masters, and by whose death they now believed that they could purchase freedom for evermore.

“ Egalite ! fraternite ! liberte ! ” Such was the battle-cry of this howling, murdering populace. Such were the three words which burned in blood-red letters of fire above the guillotine, and their mocking emblem was the glittering axe, that flashed down, to sever from their bodies the heads of the aristocrats whom, in spite of the new religion represented in those three words, they w T ould not recognize as brethren and equals, or admit to the freedom of life and of opinion. And this battle-cry of the murderous French populace had penetrated as far as Martinique, where it had aroused the slaves from their sullen obedience to the point of demanding by force that participation in freedom, equality, and brotherhood, that had so long been denied them. They, at last, rose everywhere in open insurrection against their masters, and the firebrands which they hurled into the dwellings of the whites served as the bridal torches to their espousal of liberty.

The house of Madame Tascher de la Pagerie was one of the abodes in which these firebrands fell.

One night Josephine was awakened by the blinding light of the flames, which had already penetrated to her chamber. With a shriek of terror, she sprang from her bed, caught up little Hortense in her arms from the couch where the child lay quietly slumbering, wrapped

QUEEN HORTENSE.

her in the bedclothes, and rushed, in her night-attire, from the house. She burst, with the lion-like courage of a mother, through the shouting, fighting crowds of soldiers and blacks outside, and fled, with all the speed of mortal terror, toward the harbor. There lay a French vessel, just ready to weigh anchor. An officer, w T lio at that moment was stepping into the small boat that was to convey him to the departing ship, saw this young woman, as, holding her child tightly to her bosom, she sank down, with one last despairing cry, half inanimate, upon the beach. Filled with the deepest compassion, he hastened to her, and, raising both mother and child in his arms, he bore them to his boat, which then instantly put out from land, and bounded away over the billows with its lovely burden.

The ship was soon reached, and Josephine, still tightly clasping her child to her breast, and happy in having saved this only jewel, climbed up the unsteady ladder to the ship’s decks. Until this moment all her thoughts remained concentrated upon her child, and it w^as only when she had seen her little Hortense safely put to bed in the cabin and free from all danger — only after she had fulfilled all the duties of a mother, that the woman revived in her breast, and she cast shamed and frightened glances around her. Only half-clad, in light, fluttering night-clothes, without any other covering to her beautiful neck and bosom than her superb, luxuriant hair, which fell around her and partly hid them, like a thick black veil, stood the young Viscountess Josephine

DAYS OF CHILDHOOD.

de Beauliarnais, in the midst of a group of gazing men !

However, some of the ladies on the ship came to her aid, and, so soon as her toilet had been sufficiently improved, Josephine eagerly requested to be taken back to land, in order that she might fly to her mother’s assistance.

But the captain opposed this request, as he was unwilling to give the young fugitive over to the tender mercies of the assassins who were burning and massacring ashore, and whose murderous yells could be distinctly heard on board of the vessel. The entire coast, so far as the eye could reach, looked like another sea — a sea, though, of flame and smoke, which shot up its leaping billows in long tongues of fire far against the sky. It was a terrible, an appalling spectacle ; and Josephine fled from it to the bedside of her little sleeping daughter. Then, kneeling there by the couch of her child, she uplifted to heaven her face, down which the tears were streaming, and implored God to spare her mother.

But, meanwhile, the ship weighed anchor, and sped farther and farther away from this blazing coast.

Josephine stood on the deck and gazed back at her mother’s burning home, which gradually grew less to her sight, then glimmered only like a tiny star on the distant horizon, and finally vanished altogether. With that last ray her childhood and past life had sunk forever in the sea, and a new world and a new life opened for both mother and child. The past was, like the ships of Cor- 2

QUEEN HORTENSE.

tez, burned behind her ; yet it threw a magic light far away over into her future, and as Josephine stood there with her little Hortense in her arms, and sent her last farewell to the island where her early days had been spent, she bethought her of the old mulatto-woman who had whispered in her ear one day :

“ You will go back to France, and, ere long after that, all France will be at your feet. You will be greater there than a queen.”

Chapter II. The Prophecy

It was toward the close of the year 1790 that Josephine, with her little daughter, Hortense, arrived in Paris and took up her residence in a small dwelling. There she soon received the intelligence of the rescue of her mother, and of the re-establishment of peace in Martinique. In France, however, the revolution and the guillotine still raged, and the banner of the Reign of Terror — the red flag — still cast its bloody shadow over Paris. Its inhabitants were terror-stricken ; no one knew in the evening that he would still be at liberty on the following day, or that he would live to see another sunset. Death lay in wait at every door, and reaped its dread harvest in every house and in every family. In the face of these horrors, Josephine forgot all her earlier

THE PROPHECY.

griefs, all the insults and humiliations to which she had been subjected by her husband ; the old love revived in her breast, and, as it might well be that on the morrow death would come knocking at her own door, she wished to devote the present moment to a reconciliation with her husband, and a reunion with her son.

But all her attempts in this direction were in vain. The viscount had felt her flight to Martinique to be too grave an injury, too great an insult, to be now willing to consent to a reconciliation with his wife. Sympathizing friends arranged a meeting between them, without, however, previously informing the viscount of their design. His anger was therefore great when, on entering the parlor of Count Montmorin, in response to that gentleman’s invitation, he found there the wife he had so obstinately and wrathfully avoided. He was about to retire hastily, when a charming child rushed forward, greeted him tenderly in silvery tones, and threw herself into his arms. The viscount was now powerless to fly ; he pressed his child, his Hortense, to his heart, and when the child, with a winning smile, entreated him to kiss her mamma as he had kissed her ; when he saw the beautiful countenance of Josephine wet with tears; when he heard his father’s voice saying, “My son, reconcile yourself with my daughter ! Josephine is my daughter, and I would not call her so if she were unworthy,” and when he saw his handsome son, Eugene, gazing, at him wistfully, his head resting on his mother’s shoulder, his heart relented. Leading little Hortense by the hand, he stepped forward

QUEEN HORTENSE.

to his wife, and, with a lond cry of joy and a blissful greeting of love, Josephine sank on his bosom.

Peace was re-established, and husband and wife were now united in a closer bond of love than ever before. The storms seemed to have spent their rage, and the heaven of their happiness was clear and cloudless. But this heaven was soon to be overcast with the black shadow of the revolution.

Yiscount Beauliarnais, returned by the nobility of Blois to the new legislative body, the Estates-General, resigned this position, in order to serve his country with his sword instead of his tongue. With the rank of adjutant-general, he repaired to the Army of the North, accompanied by Josephine’s blessings and tears. A dread premonition told her that she would never see the general again, and this premonition did not deceive her. The spirit of anarchy and insurrection not only raged among the people of Paris, but also in the army. The aristocrats, who were given over to the guillotine in Paris, were also regarded with distrust and hatred in the army, and Yiscount Beauharnais, who, for his gallantry on the battle-field of Soissons, had been promoted to the position of commanding general, was accused by his own officers of being an enemy of France and of the new order of things. He was arrested, taken back to Paris, and thrown into the prison of the Luxembourg, where so many other victims of the revolution lay in confinement.

The sad intelligence of her husband’s misfortune soon reached Josephine, and aroused her love to energetic

THE PROPHECY.

action in his behalf. She mentally vowed to liberate her husband, the father of her children, or to die with him. She courageously confronted all dangers, all suspicions, and was happy when she found him in his prison, where she visited him, whispering words of consolation and hope in his ear.