XVI and Marie-Antoinette, when z,ooo people died in the Champs
Elysees. His advisers tried to palliate the portent by alleging that it
pointed to Schwarzenberg, not the Emperor, and Napoleon took heart
from this. After the battle of Dresden in 1813 it was reported to him that
Schwarzenberg had fallen, but he then became gloomy when it transpired
that it was his old enemy General Moreau who had been killed.
Omens notwithstanding, the marriage initially turned out to be
unexpectedly successful. Marie-Louise and Napoleon spent three months
in honeymoon mode, even as France weathered a severe economic crisis
and lost the initiative in Spain. The Emperor's apparent lack of interest
in his Empire was universally remarked: he was often late for council
meetings and kept postponing his promised departure for Spain. Indeed,
right into r8II, he continued in uxorious and lovesick mood, frequently
finding excuses for balls, fetes, operas and hunts, and happily sitting
through long banquets with his new Empress at his side. Even the cynical
Metternich was forced to report to Emperor Francis that the couple were
genuinely in love. Napoleon even seemed to be in awe of his wife, to the
point where Marie-Louise confided to Metternich: 'I am not afraid of
Napoleon, but I am beginning to think he is afraid of me.' The only
criticism the Emperor ever made of her personally was that she was too
fond of her food - an attribute he considered 'unfeminine'. Marie
Louise's one drawback as Empress was that she was never at ease with the
French. Possibly because she could not forget that this was the people
who had murdered her aunt, she appeared uneasy on public occasions;
her shyness came across as coldness and hauteur, especially as she hated
small talk and social chitchat. Josephine had managed to win Parisian
hearts, but this was a trick the new Empress could never manage.
The marriage with Marie-Louise also exacerbated relations with the
Church, for thirteen cardinals refused the urgent imperial summons to
attend the wedding. These so-called 'black cardinals' - to distinguish
them from the pro-Bonaparte 'red cardinals'- were then disciplined by
Fesch and, when they proved intransigent, thrown into prison. Needing a
break from the stresses of office, the Emperor decided on a showy
imperial 'progress'. On 27 April r8ro Napoleon and Marie-Louise
departed for a month-long tour of Belgium and northern France, taking
in St-Quentin, Cambrai, Anvers, Breda, Bergen-op-Zoom, Middleburg,
Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, Dunkirk, Boulogne, Dieppe, Le Havre and
Rouen. The imperial couple were accompanied by thirty-five coaches full
of princelings and puppet kings. Marie-Louise recorded in her diary the
miseries of the long journey, the intrusiveness of protocol and her
husband's irritation if ever she said she was hungry.
marcin
(Marcin)
#1