Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete
much suspected by the Bourbons, but really engaged in a lawsuit with her
husband about the custody of her sons. She had to go into hiding when
the news of the landing arrived, but her empty house, left unwatched,
became very useful for receiving the Bonapartists, who wished for a
place of concealment, amongst them, as we shall see, being, of all
people, Fouché! Hortense was met by Napoleon with some reproaches for
accepting a title from the Bourbons, but she did the honours of the
Elysee for him, and it is creditable to both of them that, braving the
vile slanders about their intercourse, she was with him to the end;
and that one of the last persons to embrace him at Malmaison before
he started for the coast was his adopted daughter, the child of his
discarded wife. Hortense's presence in Paris was thought to be too
dangerous by the Prussian Governor; and she was peremptorily ordered to
leave. An appeal to the Emperor Francis received a favourable answer,
but Francis always gave way where any act against his son-in-law was
in question, and she had to start at the shortest notice on a wandering
life to Aix, Baden, and Constance, till the generosity of the small
but brave canton of Thurgau enabled her to get a resting-place at the
Chateau of Arenenberg.
In 1831 she lost her second son, the eldest then surviving, who died
from fever in a revolutionary attempt in which he and his younger
brother, the future Napoleon. III., were engaged. She was able to visit
France incognito, and even to see Louis Philippe and his Queen; but her
presence in the country was soon thought dangerous, and she was urged to
leave. In 1836 Hortense's last child, Louis Napoleon, made his attempt
at an 'emeule' at Strasburg, and was shipped off to America by the
Government. She went to France to plead for him, and then, worn out by
grief and anxiety, returned to Arenenberg, which her son, the future
Emperor, only succeeded in reaching in time to see her die in October
1837. She was laid with Josephine at Rueil.
Hortense's brother, Prince Eugène, the Viceroy of Italy, was at Vienna
when Napoleon returned, and fell under the suspicion of the Allies of
having informed the Emperor of the intention of removing him from Elba.
He was detained in Bavaria by his father-in-law the King, to whose Court
he retired, and who in 1817 created him Duke of Leuchtenberg and Prince
of Eichstadt. With the protection of Bavaria he actually succeeded in
wringing from the Bourbons some 700,000 francs of the property of his
mother. A first attack of apoplexy struck him in 1823, and he died from
a second in February 1824 at Munich. His descendants have intermarried
into the Royal Families of Portugal, Sweden, Brazil, Russia, 'and
Wartemberg; his grandson now (1884) holds the title of Leuchtenberg.
Except Louis, an invalid, all the brothers of the Emperor were around
him in the Cent Jours, the supreme effort of their family. Joseph had
left Spain after Vittoria, and had remained in an uncomfortable and
unrecognised state near Paris until in 1814 he was again employed, and
when, rightly or not, he urged the retreat of the Regency from Paris to
Blois. He then took refuge at his chateau of Prangins in the canton Vaud
in Switzerland, closely watched by the Bourbonists, who dreaded danger
from every side except the real point, and who preferred trying to
hunt the Bonapartists from place to place, instead of making their life
bearable by carrying out the engagements with them.
In 1816, escaping from the arrest with which he was threatened, after
having written to urge Murat to action with fatal effect, Joseph joined
Napoleon in Paris, and appeared at the Champ de Mai, sitting also in the
Chamber of Peers, but, as before, putting forward ridiculous pretensions
as to his inherent right to the peerage, and claiming a special seat.
In fact, he never could realise how entirely he owed any position to the
brother he wished to treat as an equal.
He remained in Paris during the brief campaign, and after Waterloo
was concealed in the house of the Swedish Ambassador, where his
sister-in-law, the Crown Princess of Sweden, the wife of Bernadotte, was
living. Muffling, the Prussian Governor of Paris, wished to arrest him,
but as the Governor could not violate the domicile of an Ambassador,
he had to apply to the Czar, who arranged for the escape of the ex-King
before the Governor could seize him Joseph went to the coast, pretty
much following the route of Napoleon. He was arrested once at Saintes,
but was allowed to proceed, and he met his brother on the 4th of July,
at Rochefort.
It is significant as to the possibility of the escape of Napoleon that
Joseph succeeded in getting on the brig Commerce as "M. Bouchard," and,
though the ship was thrice searched by the English, he got to New York
on the 28th of August, where he was mistaken for Carnot. He was well
received, and, taking the title of Comte de Survilliers, he first lived
at Lansdowne, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, where he afterwards always
passed part of the year while he was in America. He also bought the
property of Point Breeze, at Bordentown, on the Delaware, where he built
a house with a fine view of the river. This first house was burnt
down, but he erected another, where he lived in some state and in great
comfort, displaying his jewels and pictures to his admiring neighbours,
and showing kindness to impecunious nephews.
The news of the Revolution of July in 1830, which drove Charles X. from
the throne, excited Joseph's hopes for the family of which he considered
himself the Regent, and he applied to Metternich to get the Austrian
Government to allow or assist in the placing his nephew, the Duke of
Reichstadt, on the throne of France. Austria would not even answer.
In July 1832 Joseph crossed to England, where he met Lucien, just
arrived from Italy, bringing the news of the death of his nephew.
Disappointed, he stayed in England for some time, but returned to
America in 1836. In he finally left America, and again came to England,
where he had a paralytic stroke, and in 1843 he went to Florence, where
he met his wife after a long separation.
Joseph lived long enough to see the two attempts of another nephew,
Louis Napoleon, at Strasburg in 1836, and at Boulogne in 1840, which
seem to have been undertaken without his knowledge, and to have much
surprised him. He died in Florence in 1844; his body was buried first
in Santa Croce, Florence, but was removed to the Invalides in 1864. His
wife the ex-Queen, had retired in 1815 to Frankfort and to Brussels,
where she was well received by the King, William, and where she stayed
till 1823, when she went to Florence, dying there in 1845. Her monument
is in the Cappella Riccardi, Santa Croce, Florence.
Lucien had retired to Rome in 1804, on the creation of the Empire, and
had continued embroiled with his brother, partly from his so-called
Republican principles, but chiefly from his adhering to his marriage,
his second one, with Madame Jouberthon,--a union which Napoleon steadily
refused to acknowledge, offering Lucien anything, a kingdom or the hand
of a queen (if we take Lucien's account), if he would only consent to
the annulment of the contract.
In August 1810, affecting uneasiness as Napoleon stretched his power
over Rome, Lucien embarked for America, but he was captured by the
English and taken, first to Malta and then to England, where he passed
the years till 1814 in a sort of honourable captivity, first at Ludlow
and then at Thorngrove, not far from that town.
In 1814 Lucien was released, when he went to Rome, where he was welcomed
by the kindly old Pope, who remembered the benefits conferred by
Napoleon on the Church, while he forgot the injuries personal to
himself; and the stiff-necked Republican, the one-time "Brutus"
Bonaparte, accepted the title of Duke of Musignano and Prince of Canino.
In 1815 Lucien joined his brother, whom he wished to abdicate at the
Champ de Mai in favour of the King of Rome, placing his sword only at
the disposal of France. This step was seriously debated, but, though
it might have placed the Allies in a more difficult position, it would
certainly have been disregarded by them, at least unless some great
victory had given the dynasty firmer footing. After Waterloo he was
in favour of a dissolution of the Chambers, but Napoleon had become
hopeless and almost apathetic, while Lucien himself, from his former
connection with the 18th and 19th Brumaire, was looked on with great
distrust by the Chambers, as indeed he was by his brother. Advantage was
taken of his Roman title to taunt him with not being a Frenchman; and
all his efforts failed. At the end he fled, and failing to cross to
England or to get to Rochefort, he reached Turin on the 12th of July
only to find himself arrested. He remained there till the 15th of
September, when he was allowed to go to Rome. There he was interned and
carefully watched; indeed in 1817 the Pope had to intervene to prevent
his removal to the north of Germany, so anxious were the Allies as to
the safety of the puppet they had put on the throne of France.
The death of Napoleon in 1821 released Lucien and the Bonaparte family
from the constant surveillance exercised over them till then. In 1830 he
bought a property, the Croce del Biacco, near Bologna. The flight of the
elder branch of the Bourbons from France in 1830 raised his hopes, and,
as already said, he went to England in 1832 to meet Joseph and to plan
some step for raising Napoleon II. to the throne. The news of the death
of his nephew dashed all the hopes of the family, and after staying in
England for some time he returned to Italy, dying at Viterbo in 1840,
and being buried at Canino, where also his second wife lies. Lucien had
a taste for literature, and was the author of several works, which a
kindly posterity will allow to die.
Louis Bonaparte had fled from his Kingdom of Holland in 1810, after a
short reign of four years, disgusted with being expected to study the
interests of the brother to whom he owed his throne, and with being
required to treat his wife Hortense with ordinary consideration. He had
taken refuge in Austria, putting that Court in great anxiety how to
pay him the amount of attention to be expected by the brother of the
Emperor, and at the same time the proper coldness Napoleon might wish
shown to a royal deserter. Thanks to the suggestions of Metternich, they
seem to have been successful in this task. Taking the title of Comte de,
St. Len from an estate in France; Louis went first to Toplitz, then to
Gratz, and in 1813 he took refuge in Switzerland. In 1814 he went to
Rome; and then to Florence, where the Grand-Duke Ferdinand received any
of the family who came there with great kindness.
Louis was the least interesting of the family, and it is difficult to
excuse his absence from France in 1815. After all, the present of a
kingdom is not such an unpardonable offence as to separate brothers for
ever, and Napoleon seems to have felt deeply the way in which he was
treated by a brother to whom he had acted as a father; still ill-health
and the natural selfishness of invalids may account for much. While his
son Louis Napoleon was flying about making his attempts on France, Louis
remained in the Roman Palace of the French Academy, sunk in anxiety
about his religious state. He disclaimed his son's proceedings, but this
may have been due to the Pope, who sheltered him. Anyhow, it is strange
to mark the difference between the father and his two sons who came of
age, and who took to revolution so kindly.
In 1846 Louis was ill at Leghorn when his son escaped from Ham, where he
had been imprisoned after his Boulogne attempt. Passports were refused