Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete
may serve as an example to others. The Sieur Serrurier has informed
me how you conducted yourself at the diplomatic audiences. I have,
consequently, determined that the Dutch Ambassador shall not remain
in Paris; and Admiral Yerhuell has received orders to depart within
twenty-four hours. I want no more phrases and protestations. It is
time I should know whether you intend to ruin Holland by your
follies. I do not choose that you should again send a Minister to
Austria, or that you should dismiss the French who are in your
service. I have recalled my Ambassador as I intend only to have a
charge d'affaires in Holland. The Sieur Serrurier, who remains
there in that capacity, will communicate my intentions. My
Ambassador shall no longer be exposed to your insults. Write to me
no more of those set phrases which you have been repeating for the
last three years, and the falsehood of which is proved every day.
This is the last letter I will ever write to you as long as I live.
(Signed) NAPOLEON.
Thus reduced to the cruel alternative of crushing Holland with his own
hands, or leaving that task to the Emperor, Louis did not hesitate to
lay down his sceptre. Having formed this resolution, he addressed a
message to the Legislative Body of the Kingdom of Holland explaining the
motives of his abdication. The French troops entered Holland under the
command of the Duke of Reggio, and that marshal, who was more a king
than the King himself, threatened to occupy Amsterdam. Louis then
descended from his throne, and four years after Napoleon was hurled from
his.
In his act of abdication Louis declared that he had been driven to that
step by the unhappy state of his Kingdom, which he attributed to his
brother's unfavourable feelings towards him. He added that he had
made every effort and sacrifice to put an end to that painful state
of things, and that, finally, he regarded himself as the cause of the
continual misunderstanding between the French Empire and Holland. It
is curious that Louis thought he could abdicate the crown of Holland in
favour of his son, as Napoleon only four years after wished to abdicate
his crown in favour of the King of Rome.
Louis bade farewell to the people of Holland in a proclamation, after
the publication of which he repaired to the waters at Toeplitz. There he
was living in tranquil retirement when he learned that his brother had
united Holland to the Empire. He then published a protest, of which I
obtained a copy, though its circulation was strictly prohibited by the
police. In this protest Louis said:
The constitution of the state guaranteed by the Emperor, my brother,
gave me the right of abdicating in favour of my children. That
abdication was made in the form and terms prescribed by the
constitution. The Emperor had no right to declare war against
Holland, and he has not done so.
There is no act, no dissent, no demand of the Dutch nation that can
authorise the pretended union.
My abdication does not leave the throne vacant. I have abdicated
only in favour of my children.
As that abdication left Holland for twelve years under a regency,
that is to say, under the direct influence of the Emperor, according
to the terms of the constitution, there was no need of that union
for executing every measure he might have in view against trade and
against England, since his will was supreme in Holland.
But I ascended the throne without any other conditions except those
imposed upon me by my conscience, my duty, and the interest and
welfare of my subjects. I therefore declare before God and the
independent sovereigns to whom I address myself--
First, That the treaty of the 16th of March 1810, which occasioned
the separation of the province of Zealand and Brabant from Holland,
was accepted by compulsion, and ratified conditionally by me in
Paris, where I was detained against my will; and that, moreover, the
treaty was never executed by the Emperor my brother. Instead of
6000 French troops which I was to maintain, according to the terms
of the treaty, that number has been more than doubled; instead of
occupying only the mouths of the rivers and the coasts, the French
custom-horses have encroached into the interior of the country;
instead of the interference of France being confined to the measures
connected with the blockade of England, Dutch magazines have been
seized and Dutch subjects arbitrarily imprisoned; finally, none of
the verbal promises have been kept which were made in the Emperor's
name by the Duc de Cadore to grant indemnities for the countries
ceded by the said treaty and to mitigate its execution, if the King
would refer entirely to the Emperor, etc. I declare, in my name, in
the name of the nation and my son, the treaty of the 16th of March
1810 to be null and void.
Second, I declare that my abdication was forced by the Emperor, my
brother, that it was made only as the last extremity, and on this
one condition--that I should maintain the rights of Holland and my
children. My abdication could only be made in their favour.
Third, In my name, in the name of the King my son, who is as yet a
minor, and in the name of the Dutch nation, I declare the pretended
union of Holland to France, mentioned in the decree of the Emperor,
my brother, dated the 9th of July last, to be null, void, illegal,
unjust, and arbitrary in the eyes of God and man, and that the
nation and the minor King will assert their just rights when
circumstances permit them.
(Signed)LOUIS.
August 1, 1810.
Thus there seemed to be an end of all intercourse between these two
brothers, who were so opposite in character and disposition. But
Napoleon, who was enraged that Louis should have presumed to protest,
and that in energetic terms, against the union of his Kingdom with the
Empire, ordered him to return to France, whither he was summoned in his
character of Constable and French Prince. Louis, however, did not think
proper to obey this summons, and Napoleon, mindful of his promise of
never writing to him again, ordered the following letter to be addressed
to him by M. Otto, who had been Ambassador from France to Vienna since
the then recent marriage of the Emperor with Maria Louisa--
SIRE:--The Emperor directs me to write to your Majesty as follows:--
"It is the duty of every French Prince, and every member of the
Imperial family, to reside in France, whence they cannot absent
themselves without the permission of the Emperor. Before the union
of Holland to the Empire the Emperor permitted the King to reside at
Toeplitz, is Bohemia. His health appeared to require the use of the
waters, but now the Emperor requires that Prince Louis shall return,
at the latest by the 1st of December next, under pain of being
considered as disobeying the constitution of the Empire and the head
of his family, and being treated accordingly."
I fulfil, Sire, word for word the mission with which I have been
entrusted, and I send the chief secretary of the embassy to be
assured that this letter is rightly delivered. I beg your Majesty
to accept the homage of my respect, etc.
(Signed)OTTO.
--[The eldest son of Louis, one of the fruits of his unhappy
marriage with Hortense Beauharnais, the daughter of Josephine,
the wife of his brother Napoleon, was little more than six
years of age when his father abdicated the crown of Holland in
his favour. In 1830-31 this imprudent young man joined the
ill-combined mad insurrection in the States of the Pope. He
was present in one or two petty skirmishes, and was, we
believe, wounded; but it was a malaria fever caught in the
unhealthy Campagna of Rome that carried him to the grave in the
twenty-seventh year of his age.--Editor of 1836 edition.--
The first child of Louis and of Hortense had died in 1807.
The second son, Napoleon Louis (1804-1831) in whose favour he
abdicated had been created Grand Duc de Berg et de Cleves by
Napoleon in 1809. He married to 1826 Charlotte, the daughter
of Joseph Bonaparte, and died in 1831, while engaged in a
revolutionary movement in Italy. On his death his younger
brother Charles Louis Napoleon, the future Napoleon III., first
came forward as an aspirant.]--
What a letter was this to be addressed by a subject to a prince and a
sovereign. When I afterwards saw M. Otto in Paris, and conversed with
him on the subject, he assured me how much he had been distressed at the
necessity of writing such a letter to the brother of the Emperor. He had
employed the expressions dictated by Napoleon in that irritation which
he could never command when his will was opposed.
--[With regard to Louis and his conduct in Holland Napoleon thus
spoke at St. Helena:
"Louis is not devoid of intelligence, and has a good heart, but even
with these qualifications a man may commit many errors, and do a
great deal of mischief. Louis is naturally inclined to be
capricious and fantastical, and the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau
have contributed to increase this disposition. Seeking to obtain a
reputation for sensibility and beneficence, incapable by himself of
enlarged views, and, at most, competent to local details, Louis
acted like a prefect rather than a King.
"No sooner had he arrived in Holland than, fancying that nothing
could be finer than to have it said that he was thenceforth a true
Dutchman, he attached himself entirely to the party favourable to
the English, promoted smuggling, and than connived with our enemies.
It became necessary from that moment watch over him, and even
threaten to wage war against him. Louis then seeking a refuge
against the weakness of his disposition in the most stubborn
obstinacy, and mistaking a public scandal for an act of glory, fled
from his throne, declaiming against me and against my insatiable
ambition, my intolerable tyranny, etc. What then remained for me to
do? Was I to abandon Holland to our enemies? Ought I to have given
it another King? But is that case could I have expected more from
him than from my own brother? Did not all the Kings that I created
act nearly in the same manner? I therefore united Holland to the
Empire, and this act produced a most unfavourable impression in
Europe, and contributed not a little to lay the foundation of our
misfortunes" (Memorial de Sainte Helene)]--
CHAPTER XVIII.
1809.
Demands for contingents from some of the small States of Germany--
M. Metternich--Position of Russia with respect to France--Union of
Austria and Russia--Return of the English to Spain--Soult King of
Portugal, and Murat successor to the Emperor--First levy of the
landwehr in Austria--Agents of the Hamburg 'Correspondent'--
Declaration of Prince Charles--Napoleon's march to Germany--His
proclamation--Bernadotte's departure for the army--Napoleon's
dislike of Bernadotte--Prince Charles' plan of campaign--The English
at Cuxhaven--Fruitlessness of the plots of England--Napoleon
wounded--Napoleon's prediction realised--Major Schill--Hamburg
threatened and saved--Schill in Lübeck--His death, and destruction
of his band--Schill imitated by the Duke of Brunswick-Oels--
Departure of the English from Cuxhaven.
Bonaparte, the foundations of whose Empire were his sword and his.
victories, and who was anxiously looking forward to the time when the