At first it seemed that Marie Walewska might be the catalyst that
finally made Napoleon opt for a divorce. In March Talleyrand told the
Remusats that the Emperor was definitely going to ditch Josephine. Yet
once again she made a comeback. One night the Emperor was preparing
to host a grand reception at the Tuileries when he was taken violently ill
with stomach cramps. Josephine, fu lly attired in ball gown and crown
jewels, hastened to his bedside to comfort him, and a deeply touched
Emperor was overcome with waves of sentimentality. He pulled her down
on to the bed and exclaimed: 'My poor Josephine, I can't possibly leave
you.' When he recovered, the two made love and spent the night
together. Once again Josephine had been reprieved, to the fury of
Talleyrand and Fouche. 'Why can't the devil of a man make up his
mind?' Talleyrand fumed. Fouche remarked that the Empress would be
better off dead, though he himself had unwittingly helped to secure a stay
of execution for her; when he told Napoleon that there was massive
opposition to the military draft and one-tenth of all conscripts had
deserted, Napoleon concluded this was not a propitious moment for a
divorce.
The interlock between military concerns and domestic matters is
vividly illustrated by Napoleon's decision to set off for Spain on 2 April
1808 and to send Marie Walewska back to Poland. The affairs of the
Iberian peninsula had begun to obsess the Emperor, as the logic of his
blockade of England sucked him more and more into that theatre. The
beginning of a long and ultimately fatal trail was his order to Junot to
invade Portugal in October 1807, but as early as July he had told
Talleyrand that no Continental Blockade of England would work unless
Portuguese ports were closed. To him it was a simple matter: 'The
English say they will not respect neutrals at sea; I will not recognize them
on land.'
This was the point where Napoleon, master of Europe, should have
devoted all his energies to a military solution to the problem of England.
His plan for an economic strangulation of the British Isles was bound to
fail, if only because it had global implications the Emperor had not
thought through. A very good example was the way the logic of the
blockade cut across his earlier hopes to inveigle Britain into a war with
the U.S.A. On 2 July 1807 President Jefferson excluded British warships
from U.S. territorial waters. Then Napoleon ruined things by authorizing
his corsairs on 18 September to seize from merchant ships on the high
seas any merchandise exported from England. In the circumstances
Jefferson decided on a wait-and-see policy, ordered an act of embargo (22
marcin
(Marcin)
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