Citizen Emperor (71 page)

In fact, Napoleon preferred the Russian option. At Erfurt, he had asked Talleyrand to approach Alexander about marrying one of his two unmarried sisters.
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The elder was Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna, who was twenty in 1808, and was considered witty, intelligent and charming. The younger was the Grand Duchess Anna, who was only fifteen years old. Alexander’s estranged wife, Elisaveta Alekseevna, wrote of Ekaterina that she had ‘a tone that would not be suitable for a woman of forty’, much less for a woman of twenty.
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There was no doubt a touch of bitterness in that remark: Ekaterina was well liked among the Francophobe faction at court and was considered a possible replacement for the Tsar.
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Indeed, she was considered the mirror image of her grandmother, Catherine II, who had overthrown her husband, Peter III, to reach the throne.
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It was their mother though, the Empress Dowager, Mariia Federovna, the former wife of Paul I, who had absolute control over whom they could marry, and she hated Napoleon. Nevertheless, the Russian court was under the mistaken belief at the end of 1807 that a marriage alliance between Napoleon and the Grand Duchess Ekaterina was probable.
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Shortly after Alexander’s return from Erfurt, perhaps alarmed at Napoleon’s intentions, the Empress Dowager married off Ekaterina to a distant cousin, Prince George of Holstein-Oldenburg.
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This did not seem to bother Napoleon very much, largely because he had set his sights on the younger of the two sisters, Anna. He pushed home the point as relations between the two countries worsened, no doubt in the hope of repairing the cracks.

At the end of November 1809 – that is, before the divorce had been finalized – Napoleon instructed Caulaincourt, the French ambassador in Petersburg, to approach Alexander formally with a request for his sister’s hand in marriage. ‘It will be a proof to me’, he wrote to Caulaincourt, ‘that Alexander is an ally. It [the divorce] would be a real sacrifice for me. I love Josephine. I will never be happier with anyone else, but my family . . . and all the politicians insist on it in the name of France.’
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Yes, well, the sacrifice was possibly all on the Russian side. Alexander stalled for as long as he could – he used his mother as an excuse, saying that she felt Anna was too young, that she had lost two daughters through early childbirths and did not want to see another married before she was eighteen – so that by the beginning of 1810 Napoleon was still waiting for an answer. The Empress Dowager, although she had nothing but contempt for the French, may nevertheless have been playing to public opinion, perhaps for her own ends. She had briefly attempted to govern in the place of her murdered husband before handing over the reins of power to her son, but over the years she had managed to gather around her all those discontented with the regime’s pro-French stance.
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By this time Napoleon realized what Alexander’s lack of enthusiasm meant, and he decided on pre-empting the humiliation that would inevitably come with a refusal by turning to Austria. Three days after receiving a courier from Petersburg, on 6 February 1810, he withdrew his offer of marriage while Eugène officially asked the Austrian ambassador, Prince Schwarzenberg, for the hand of Marie-Louise. Napoleon had already sounded out the Austrian court so Schwarzenberg was authorized well in advance to accept such an offer. That same day, Napoleon had a marriage contract drawn up, a duplicate of that which had been prepared for Louis and Marie-Antoinette in 1770. The marriage then was at the political level a public relations coup.
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In diplomatic terms, this was to turn his back on Russia. It was a deliberate choice; Napoleon knew that relations with Russia were less than perfect. In fact, the choice of an Austrian princess made matters worse.

News of the forthcoming marriage was accompanied by a concerted effort in the press to prepare for the arrival of (another) Austrian princess. Poets, musicians, writers, painters were all enlisted.
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Plays with the marriage as a background to the plot were quickly written and performed, although it is impossible to tell whether audiences looked on all this with amusement or cynicism. On the other hand, if Comte Otto, now the French ambassador to Vienna, is to be believed – but, then, what else could he say? – the announcement of marriage was greeted favourably by all classes of Viennese society,
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even if Viennese aristocracy considered the alliance undignified.
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This was not the case in those parts of the Empire, such as the Rhineland, where pro-Austrian sentiment was strong.
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In those regions, news of the marriage made a deep impression, reinforcing the belief that Napoleon and the Empire were here to stay. The regime was being given a degree of legitimacy that it had lacked in royalist eyes till then.
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Even Joseph de Maistre wrote to the King of Sardinia that from this time on Napoleon would have to be treated like any other sovereign.
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When Alexander learnt of the forthcoming marriage he, quite unreasonably under the circumstances, was miffed, believing that Napoleon had been playing a double game – and this despite having sent a letter effectively refusing Napoleon’s request on the grounds that Anna’s mother felt there could be no marriage for at least two more years. Russian public opinion was just as offended.
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Moreover, the Tsar considered the marriage alliance between Austria and France a real danger. It brought the two countries closer together, even if only on paper, appeared to be a potential strategic threat to Russia and made him look a fool to his own people.
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The fact is that Vienna had taken a much more active interest in a marriage alliance with Napoleon and had approached the French with a marriage proposal in 1809 almost as soon as the guns were stilled.
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The alliance represented a shift in thinking for Napoleon, away from Russia towards Austria. Admittedly, the Austria of 1810 was not at its peak – it had been greatly reduced in size since the start of the wars and had been defeated four times by France – but the arguments put forward by Talleyrand in favour of an Austrian alliance were persuasive (though somewhat specious). They consisted largely of a belief that Russia was politically too unstable and that its foreign policy was too closely linked to the person of the Tsar; a change in ruler would invariably lead to a change in policy, as had occurred with the death of Paul I. Austria, on the other hand, was more deeply embedded in a foreign political system that did not rely on the character of one emperor or another.
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Austria was, in fact, no more consistent in its foreign policy choices than any other great power during this period.

Vienna calculated that having a princess of its own at the French court would disarm Napoleon, and make him less mistrustful towards Austria, while Marie-Louise would be working inside to promote Austrian interests.
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Certainly the marriage alliance gave Austria a few years’ peace during which it could heal its wounds after the defeat of 1809, but if Metternich, now Austria’s foreign minister, hoped to exploit the favourable atmosphere to gain diplomatic concessions, he was to be disappointed.
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Napoleon was not mollified and did not want to change the treaty of 1809. In real terms, Austria gained little tangible from the alliance.
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One should not think, however, that the alliance was all to Napoleon’s benefit. The court of Vienna got what it wanted: it prevented France and Russia from drawing closer together, and bolstered the faltering prestige of Francis. Four wars and four defeats had done enormous harm to the Austrian monarchy’s reputation. The alliance with Napoleon, even if it was a complete backflip to what it had practised over the last ten years,
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strengthened the Austrian throne just as much as the Austrian monarchy’s ancient lineage bolstered Napoleon’s legitimacy.
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Francis may not have been overjoyed by the prospect of having Napoleon as a son-in-law,
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but we know that the announcement of the marriage in Vienna was well received. Even the streets of Vienna seemed to welcome the news. Most believed an alliance would force Britain to make peace and bring about stability on the Continent.
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As for the political elite, they were delighted, or at least some of them were, including Metternich, who believed that he had carried out a great diplomatic coup that had allowed Austria to resume its place among the great powers only months after suffering a humiliating defeat.

For Napoleon, the marriage made political sense too. Not only was Austria (still) a power to be contended with on the Continent, militarily and in terms of population, but as an ally it would also lend stability to the centre of Europe. Moreover, French diplomats were able to point out that if Louis XIV and Louis XV had been able to wage war successfully against Britain, it was in part due to the Austrian alliance. Finally, the marriage served to appease Napoleon’s main bugbear, legitimacy, by injecting Austrian Bourbon blood into the succession (Marie-Louise was also descended from Charles Quint and Louis XIV).
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This worked, up to a point. The number of
ancien régime
nobles who rallied to the court after 1810 is impressive, even if their adherence was to be short-lived.
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Talleyrand was hoping for some kind of European reconciliation, as if the marriage alliance was going to expiate the Revolution’s crime of executing a king. Napoleon tried to make political mileage out of the marriage alliance by distributing the modern equivalent of a statement to French diplomats abroad. England, he argued, had always claimed that he was out to destroy Europe’s monarchies.
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Before the Revolution French courts had functioned like vast families in which those admitted were given a privileged place. The European monarchies in particular were tightly bound by blood links, constituting a veritable ‘society of princes’ whose relations were strictly codified.
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The mistake that Napoleon made was in thinking that, through marriage, he would be admitted into this family. He was not. He was the relative that everyone tolerates but whom no one likes. And he was disliked in part because he did not behave like a prince. Indeed, he may not even have been entirely aware of the strict rules codifying princely behaviour. He believed that rigorous court etiquette was enough, that to appear princely would position him among the sovereigns of Europe. It could never, however, replace the bonds of blood that linked other crown princes.
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Etiquette at Napoleon’s court became even more rigid after his marriage to Marie-Louise, as if its rigid application was one more proof of the legitimacy of the regime.

Marie-Louise

Marie-Louise, one of thirteen children, had been her father’s favourite and had been brought up to refer to Napoleon as the ‘cannibal’, the ‘usurper’ or ‘Attila’. As a child she had a doll called ‘Bonaparte’ that she delighted in torturing.
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She had even referred to her future husband as the ‘Antichrist’ and the ‘Corsican’ in some of her letters, and made the sign of the cross when she heard his name.
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She had had to flee the capital twice in her lifetime as Napoleon and his troops approached. In short, she was raised to believe that he was a bloodthirsty, cold-hearted killer and to cultivate a deep aversion.
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Now, she had to overturn those prejudices and prepare herself, like the dutiful daughter of the Emperor she was, for marriage with a man whom she had learnt to detest. Like her great-aunt Marie-Antoinette, she had received little or no formal education at court. The primary purpose of an Austrian princess was to produce sons to help continue whatever dynasty she was eventually married into. Nevertheless, she was distraught on learning in the newspapers at the beginning of 1810 that Napoleon had divorced Josephine, aware that she would now be considered a potential wife. She wrote to her father reminding him that he had promised he would never force her to marry. But there was something else; she had met and fallen in love with Archduke Francis of Modena, her stepmother’s brother.
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Her father never replied to her letter. And yet she persisted for some time in her naive belief that he would never force her to marry against her will and that his feelings for her would take precedence over dynastic considerations. When she was made aware of the negotiations, she pleaded with him to be spared. To no avail. Francis could do little else but offer her up, regardless of whether she was his favourite or not. As an Austrian princess, as the daughter of the Emperor, Marie-Louise was prepared to make this ultimate sacrifice.
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