The Girls' Book of Famous Queens

“She would have done it! She was capable of doing it!” exclaimed Napoleon, with deep emotion and eyes full of tears; and then he asked the physician the most minute questions about the last hours of Josephine: the nature of her disease, the friends and attendants who were around her at the hour of her death, and the conduct of her two children Eugène and Hortense.

How different was Josephine’s fidelity to the man who had even cut her to the heart by his cruel desertion when he was at the height of his glory, but whom in his dire misfortunes she did not cease to love and desire to aid, from the cold apathy of the woman who had taken her rightful place!

After the fall of the emperor, and his departure to the island of Elba, Josephine fell into a profound melancholy. For several days she preferred to remain alone. Her ladies noticed that she often perused a letter which the emperor had written to her from Brienne, in which he said: —

“Josephine, while revisiting the spot where I passed my early childhood, and comparing the peaceful hours I then enjoyed with the agitations which I now experience, I am constrained to say to myself, I fear death no longer – to me it would this day be a blessing, —but I would once more see Josephine.”

Speaking of Napoleon at this time, she is reported to have said: “I am the only one to whom he intrusted all his secrets – all except the one which has caused his ruin; and had he communicated that to me in season, I should still have enjoyed his presence; and by means of my counsels he would perhaps have escaped these new calamities.”

Among the last words uttered by the faithful Josephine, were these, regarding Napoleon, whose loved portrait she then gazed upon: “Banished to an island under a foreign sky, torn from France, from a wife and a beloved son, from all his friends; fallen from the palaces of kings, among the hills of Elba, overcome by cares and fatigues, sad and melancholy, alone amidst the dwellers upon that island, there still remains to him one faithful Pylades, and a few warriors who have voluntarily shared his exile. Bonaparte can never find consolation in his deep misfortunes, except in the reflection that there still remains to him one true friend who hath never ceased to watch over his precious life. But, alas! she is lost for him.”

“Josephine, Bonaparte’s last friend; Josephine, the first object of his ambition, and the only woman whom he truly loved. Bonaparte was fortunate while her lot was connected with his. His after-life was less miserable while she survived. Dying, she still wished to press his hand; his name was the last word she uttered, and her last tear fell upon his portrait.”

Time destroys great reputations, but that of Napoleon’s first wife will be deathless while woman’s self-sacrificing love remains.

“At least,” said Josephine, with dying breath; “at least I shall carry with me some regrets. I have aimed at the good of the French people; I have done all in my power to promote it, and I may say with truth to all who attend me in my last moments, that never, no, never, did the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte cause a tear to flow.”

Beautiful May had already clothed the gardens of Malmaison with verdure and adorned them with radiant flowers. The sunset tints crimsoned the western horizon, and tipped the white clouds with purple and gold. The birds in the groves were softly carolling their vesper songs, and the gentle breeze, swaying the delicate leaves, fanned with caressing touch the fevered cheek of the dying Josephine, who, with eyes fast dimming in death, gazed once more through the open window upon the loved beauties of her favorite Malmaison, which on this 29th of May, 1814, seemed to have put on new loveliness to comfort the gentle spirit so soon to take a fond and last farewell. As the shadows of twilight deepened, and the dying empress looked once more on the portrait of her idolized husband, the emperor, she exclaimed, “L’isle d’Elbe – Napoleon!” and closed her eyes on earth, and passed beyond the portals of mortal life.

“The death of Josephine threw all France into tears, and even strangers shared in the general sorrow. They witnessed the universal regrets her death occasioned, and it may be truly said, to the praise of both the friends and foes of Bonaparte, that, on this mournful occasion, all united to scatter flowers upon the tomb of the woman who had adorned the happy days of the illustrious exile.”

On the 2d of June, the funeral honors were paid to the mortal remains of the Empress Josephine, in the parish church at Ruel. Commissioners from the sovereigns of Russia and Prussia headed the procession, which proceeded from Malmaison to Ruel. Many foreign princes, marshals, generals, and officers of the French and allied armies escorted the renowned remains.

The military consisted of Russian Hussars and the National Guards of France. The chief mourners were Prince Eugène, the Grand Duke of Baden, Marquis de Beauharnais (brother-in-law), Count de Tascher (nephew), Count de Beauharnais (cousin), and the grandchildren of the deceased empress.

The funeral oration was pronounced by the Archbishop of Tours, while the bishops of Evreux and Versailles assisted in the religious ceremonies. The body of the empress was enclosed in a leaden coffin, which was afterwards placed in one of sycamore wood covered with black cloth. The casket was deposited in a vault in the church at Ruel, over which was raised a chapelle ardente formed of funeral hangings; the altar, richly decorated in the form of a tomb, and the altar-piece, representing a cross, were surmounted by a canopy. On the right was placed a statue of Immortality, on the left that of Religion. A sepulchral lamp was suspended in the middle of the chapelle ardente.

Queen Hortense, who had been conveyed to the church before the funeral obsequies, knelt for a long time beside the tomb, with her brother, after the other mourners had left the church.

The spot is now marked by a monument of white marble, representing the empress kneeling in her coronation robes, and bears this simple and touching inscription: —

EUGÈNE AND HORTENSE TO JOSEPHINE

The widow and the orphan went daily to weep by her tomb. Many of her faithful friends continued to make visits to the last resting-place of her whose memory was honored by universal respect and sincere mourning. The poor and the rich alike honored her life and mourned her death. “What now remains to Josephine is the recollection of her good deeds,” – a more fitting memorial than costly monument or marble sarcophagus of most elaborate art.

As an empress, none can claim a more exalted place, as the personification of grace, beauty, and queenly dignity. But it is as a woman– as a wife and a mother– that the brightest halo of glory crowns the pure brow of Josephine; and as Love’s Martyr, she has gained the highest place amongst the self-sacrificing women of historic fame.

THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE.

A.D. 1826

“Then happy low, lie down;
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” – Shakespeare.

“EVERYTHING happens in France,” says La Rochefoucauld; and indeed it would seem so. The history of no other country of modern times presents such a series of rapid changes, decided extremes, and strange incongruities. Monarchies, empires, republics, follow each other in rapid succession. Yet through it all – in base servility or in fierce revolt, in licentiousness or prudery, in anarchy or order, in despotism or demagogy; under Valois, Bourbon, or Bonaparte; from Versailles and Louis XIV. to Malmaison of the First, and Compiègne of the Second Empire – we see the same thoughts, the same ideas, the same traits of character, though veiled under different garbs.

In 1685 the House of Bourbon was at the zenith of its glory. France, crushed with oppression, bowed beneath its yoke. One hundred and fifty thousand souls rioted in luxury. Twenty-five millions toiled to administer to their luxury. The people cried for bread, and proud, licentious nobles bid them “eat grass,” while the monarch, from his gilded palace, thundered forth his arbitrary dictum, “L’État c’est moi!”

“The kingdom is in a deplorable state,” said Mirabeau. “It can only be regenerated by some great internal convulsion. But woe to those who live to see that. The French people do not do things by halves.” The convulsion comes. The French people do not do things by halves. The throne falls with a crash, and the guillotine stands in the Place de la Concorde.

Then comes the Empire. Glory is the object sought, and glory is attained. France is ablaze with glory. Rivoli. Austerlitz. Waterloo! And the First Empire – with its glories and its triumphs, its crowns and its sceptres, its stars and its crosses – fades like a dream, and is gone. The Bourbons return to the homes of their ancestors. Again the storm arises, and the Republic is proclaimed. The Republic becomes the Empire. Laurels, crowns, triumph! Glory is sought, but ’tis pacific glory. “The Empire is peace.” France prospers. But a dark cloud gathers on the horizon. The thunder peals. War rages fast and furious. Defeat, disaster, ruin! The Empire has fallen to pieces! Bourbon and Bonaparte wander through Europe.

’Tis the height of the Paris “season,” and with its gayly dressed crowds and splendid equipages, the Avenue des Champs Élysées wears a festive, smiling air. Bright shines the sun, gilding with its rays the dome and turrets of the Tuileries, the terraces and statues, the obelisk of Luxor, and sending back the waters of the fountains in showers of glittering diamonds, while far in the distance the massive outline of the Arc de Triomphe looms lofty against the clear blue sky. Carriages, horsemen, and pedestrians, a countless throng, are on their way to and from the Bois de Boulogne; but one alone attracts universal attention. A tall and graceful figure clad in a dark green habit, and above whose head there floats a snow-white plume, she sits proud and erect upon her splendid thoroughbred. Paris sees with admiration, and in every mouth there is but one question, “Who is yonder fair equestrienne, who sits so splendidly, who rides so fearlessly?”

“Tis Eugénie de Montijo, Comtesse de Téba.”

Born in Spain in 1826, in the province of Granada, her early days were passed among the picturesque scenery with which the pen of Irving has made us familiar. Her father, the Count de Montijo and Téba, was a grandee of Spain, and from him she inherited many titles of nobility. Washington Irving, who was then in Spain, knew her mother, Maria Manuela Kirkpatrick, and was a frequent visitor at her house, where he soon made friends with the little Eugénie; and in later years, when she was dazzling Europe with the costliness of her costumes and the splendor of her court, he recalled with interest and amusement the many times he had held upon his knee the future empress of the French, “when she was an alert, dark-eyed little girl, doubtless very happy to be entertained with such stories of her native land as he could tell her.”

From Spain she was sent to Toulouse, and afterwards to Bristol, to pursue her education; and when she left school, beautiful and accomplished, easy in manners and fluent in conversation, – which she could carry on with apparently equal ease in Spanish, English, or in French, – possessing more than average information, and displaying a readiness and aptness of repartee approaching the brilliancy of wit, with a beauty striking and exceptional, a form slender and perfectly moulded, a complexion brilliantly fair, and black eyes, large and expressive, it is not surprising that she became successively the belle of the season in London, Paris, and Madrid.

While in London she was introduced to Louis Napoleon, then an exile from France, and distinguished chiefly for the disastrous failure of his first attempt to overthrow the government of Louis Philippe. In 1851 she met him again. He was then called Napoleon III., and she was regarded as one of the leaders of fashion in Paris. His attentions to her gradually became marked and suggestive, and finally he offered to share with her his throne. On the 22d of January, 1853, the approaching nuptials were announced publicly to the Senate. In this communication, Napoleon thus expressed himself: —

“I come, then, gentlemen,” he said, “to announce that I have preferred the woman whom I love and whom I respect, to one who is unknown, and whose alliance would have had advantages mingled with sacrifices. She who has been the object of my preference is of princely descent. French in heart, by education, and the recollection of the blood shed by her father in the cause of the Empire, she has, as a Spaniard, the advantage of not having in France a family to whom it might be necessary to give honors and fortune. Endowed with all the qualities of mind, she will be the ornament of the throne. In the day of danger she will be one of its courageous supporters. A Catholic, she will address to Heaven the same prayers with me for the happiness of France. In fine, by her grace and her goodness, she will, I firmly hope, endeavor to revive in the same position the virtues of the Empress Josephine.”

On the 29th of January, the civil marriage of Louis Napoleon with Mademoiselle de Montijo took place at the Tuileries, and on the following day the religious ceremonies were celebrated at the cathedral of Nôtre Dame. Never had the arches of that venerable pile looked down upon a more brilliant assemblage. The imperial couple sat on two thrones erected in front of the high altar, and the representatives of the army, of the Senate, of the municipal authorities, and of the diplomatic corps surrounded them. All the pomp and splendor of the Catholic service, all the opulence of France’s great capital, all the beauty and brilliancy of the court, all the grim majesty of the military; science, art, and lavish luxury, – all were united and exhausted on the incidents and displays of this momentous occasion.

At last all was over, and to the echoing shouts of “Vive l’Impératrice!” Eugénie de Montijo returned with her imperial consort to the palace of the Tuileries.

The career of the great Napoleonic dynasty is without a parallel either in ancient or modern times. Long since, the universal judgment of mankind has decided that its founder, Napoleon I., was in every respect as great a hero, and probably a greater, than Alexander, Cæsar, or Charlemagne, the three most renowned representatives of ambitious daring in the world’s history. The variety and extent of Napoleon’s abilities, both as a commander, a legislator, and a ruler, place him above all his rivals; while the splendor of his victories, the extent of his conquests, and the grandeur of his elevation, exceeds theirs in an eminent degree.

“But in addition to all these elements of superior greatness, the family of Napoleon I. add an unequal attraction to his career. None of his illustrious rivals could boast of a wife as graceful and bewitching as Josephine, or as high-born and nobly descended as Maria Louisa. None could claim brothers as sagacious as Joseph, as gallant as Murat, as capable as Lucien, as romantic as Jerome. None could point to as many relatives who were sovereign princes and princesses, and who owed their lofty elevations to his own powerful arm. And none had a successor equal in talent and in desperate, successful daring, to Napoleon III.”

Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Louis Napoleon, king of Holland, and Hortense, daughter of the Empress Josephine and of her first husband, the Viscomte de Beauharnais, was born at Paris, on the 20th of April, 1808. Along the whole line of the grande armée, and throughout the entire extent of the Empire, from Hamburg to Genoa, and from the Danube to the Atlantic, salvos of artillery announced the happy event. This was an honor which fell to the lot of only two members of the imperial family, Louis Napoleon and the king of Rome, for they only were born under the imperial régime. It is not our purpose, in this short sketch of the life of the Empress Eugénie, to trace the career of Napoleon III., except in so much only as it bears upon her own.

The Revolution of 1848 was over, and France needed a monarch skilled to rule in a reign of peace. Three very poor specimens of that article had been tried, in the persons of Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Louis Philippe, and had proved miserable failures. They did no great harm, because they did nothing at all.

“Providence wrested the useless sceptre from the last, and bestowed it upon Napoleon III.”

Truly “there is nothing so successful as success,” and never has it been more clearly illustrated than in the history of Louis Napoleon. All writers who have narrated the events of his life, when in the full plentitude of his power he sat upon his throne at the Tuileries, have extolled him as a demi-god, and praised in most extravagant terms his wonderful abilities; but those who have written since the fall of the Empire denounce him as a cold and selfish conspirator and revolutionist, roué, and libertine; and declare “that among the rulers of Christendom in modern times there is not one whose record is so utterly devoid of any redeeming act, so entirely dictated by selfishness, lust, and sordid greed, as that of Charles Louis Napoleon.”

Between these two extremes lies the truth, and among the defeats and disasters of 1870 we must not forget the glories and triumphs of 1855. This much is certain, that from the time of his attainment of the supreme power, Louis Napoleon exhibited administrative talent of the first order. France was governed with the regularity and system of a gigantic piece of machinery. More vigor, energy, and harmony had never before pervaded the administration. It was said of Augustus, that he found Rome brick and left it marble. That saying would not be exaggerated if applied to Louis Napoleon and Paris. The gay capital of the Empire was the special object of his care, and Paris seemed to have thrown off the dingy and faded habiliments of past ages, which still clung to her, and to have assumed the freshness, beauty, and energy of youth. Public monuments, palaces, temples, and boulevards were, by his orders, embellished, enlarged, renovated, and repaired. Old Paris disappeared, and new Paris started up in its place. Dark, dirty, ill-paved, and worse-drained streets were replaced by noble boulevards full of palaces. He completed the Louvre, reconstructed the Tuileries, regenerated the Palais Royal, and interminably prolonged the Rue de Rivoli.

“His acts and deeds speak for themselves, and they prove, on undeniable evidence, that France was never better governed than by him. A people as fickle as the wind, as restless as the sea; a people as whimsical as women, as fanciful as children; a people with whom novelty is a mania and faction a disease; a people brave, intelligent, and generous by fits, and treacherous, frivolous, and vindictive by starts, – such a people could have been governed at that crisis only by such a ruler. And single-handed, by the sheer force of his genius, and the moral power which is the body-guard of genius, he governed them wisely and well. In spite of almost invincible opposition, in the face of almost unsurmountable obstacles, he raised them, step by step, to be regarded as the most enlightened nation of Europe; he unsparingly promoted their national welfare, he perceptibly diminished their national evils; in short, for nearly twenty years he was the glory of France and the wonder of the world.”

The alliance between France and England having terminated so gloriously for the arms and diplomacy of both countries, the emperor and empress of the French, in 1855, visited Queen Victoria in her own dominions, probably the first instance on record in which a reigning French monarch set foot upon the soil of his hereditary foes. The rejoicings on this occasion were prodigious, and Louis Napoleon, who had once paced the streets of London a penniless wanderer, was received in the same capital with universal greetings, with flying banners, with military salutes, with the congratulations of the sovereign and nobility, and with the joyful acclamations of the millions. Albert and Victoria in a short time returned the compliment, and the scene was transferred from London to Paris. “On that memorable occasion France’s gay and brilliant capital, that great centre of the world’s civilization and luxury, assumed unwonted hues of splendor, exhibited scenes of unusual festivity and rejoicing, and exhausted her varied and infinite resources to impress, delight, and charm her august visitors.”

The felicity of Louis Napoleon was now about to receive a further augmentation, and his sudden and vigorous empire to be strengthened by an additional element of perpetuity and power. On the 16th of March, 1856, a son was born at the palace of the Tuileries. On that occasion, the emperor thus addressed the Senate: “The Senate has participated in my joy on hearing that Heaven has given me a son, and you have hailed as a happy event the birth of a child of France. I intentionally make use of that expression. In fact, the Emperor Napoleon, my uncle, who had applied to the new system created by the Revolution all that was great and elevated in the old régime, had resumed that ancient denomination of the children of France. The reason is, gentlemen, that when an heir is born who is destined to perpetuate a national system, that child is not only the scion of a family, but also in truth the son of the whole country, and that appellation points out to him his duties. If this were true under the old monarchy, which represented exclusively the privileged class, how much more so is it now, when the sovereign is the elect of the nation, the first citizen of the country, and the representative of the interests of all? I thank you for the kind wishes which you have expressed for this child of France and for the empress.”

The birth of the Prince Imperial realized national hopes long deferred. And never was title more perfectly representative of truth and fact, than that of “Fils de France.” The son of France, – the son of the nation, – the gift of Providence to the people. It was in this sense that the title was bestowed, and in this sense that it was interpreted by the country. Throughout France the joy manifested was excessive, and the municipal authorities and public bodies of all kinds came forward with affectionate eagerness to manifest their sympathy in the happiness of their sovereign. What prophet could then have foretold that Napoleon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph, Prince Imperial, and Fils de France, whose birth was now so proudly hailed, whose future seemed so brilliant, and who was heir to the grandest throne in Europe, would, in a few years, be an exile in a foreign land, and that ultimately, at the early age of twenty-three, the javelins of hostile savages would terminate his career amid the wilds of Africa?

It is a bright May afternoon in the year 1857, and every avenue leading to the vast area of the Champ de Mars is crowded with endless masses of troops, marching with stately tread and martial music to the grand rendezvous. For his Majesty Napoleon III. is to hold, in honor of the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, one of those public reviews by which he exhibits, to such great advantage, the strength and majesty of his army. As far as the eye can reach, along both banks of the Seine, and through the immense perspective of the adjacent boulevards, glittering arms of cavalry and infantry flash brightly in the rays of the refulgent sun. As the hour of two tolls from the lofty towers of the Invalides, seventy thousand men, disposed so as to produce the most sublime and impressive effect, stand motionless in military array, awaiting the approach of that single man who has so heroically grasped and maintained the sceptre of dominion in France.

The noble façade of the École Militaire, the splendid dome of the Hotel des Invalides, the towering mass of the Arc de Triomphe, and a hundred other monuments of architectural beauty and historic celebrity, are within the view, combining, with the majesty of military power assembled in their centre, a coup d’œil of unrivalled magnificence.

At length the graceful waving of red and white plumes, and the gleam of polished silver helmets on the Pont de Jena, the roll of a thousand drums and the music of a thousand trumpets indicate the approach of Louis Napoleon and his illustrious guest.

Surrounded by his magnificent État Major, composed of the chief officers of all the regiments, the emperor rides with military precision into the centre of the gorgeous array. The Champ de Mars, familiar as it has been with the glories of the First Empire, has never seen the conqueror of Marengo and Austerlitz surrounded with a halo of greater martial grandeur than this which now encompasses this man who has never seen a solitary conflict of arms or commanded a single battalion in the field.

On the right of the emperor, in the costume of a Russian admiral, rides the Grand Duke Constantine, and on his left the Prince Napoleon and the Duke of Nassau, while behind them, in a sumptuous carriage, arrayed in the most gorgeous and elegant of toilettes, the very picture of loveliness and beauty, comes the Empress Eugénie.