A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, with a Sketch of Josephine, Empress of the French.Tarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
History
A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, with a Sketch of Josephine, Empress of the French.
Tarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
Josephine, Empress, consort of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1763-1814; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
Just before the negotiation were completed, Queen Louise arrived, and
tried to use her influence with Napoleon to obtain at least Magdeburg.
Napoleon accused the queen to Las Cases of trying to win him at first by
a scene of high tragedy. But when they came to meet at dinner, her
policy was quite another. “The Queen of Prussia dined with me to-day,”
wrote Napoleon to the empress on July 7th. “I had to defend myself
against being obliged to make some further concessions to her
husband; ...” and the next day, “The Queen of Prussia is really
charming; she is full of _coquetterie_ towards me. But do not be
jealous; I am an oilcloth, off which all that runs. It would cost me too
dear to play the _galant_.”
The intercessions of the queen really hurried on the treaty. When she
learned that it had been signed, and her wishes not granted, she was
indignant, wept bitterly, and refused to go to the second dinner to
which Napoleon had invited her. Alexander was obliged to go himself to
decide her. After the dinner, when she withdrew, Napoleon accompanied
her. On the staircase she stopped.
“Can it be,” she said, “that after I have had the happiness of seeing so
near me the man of the age and of history, I am not to have the liberty
and satisfaction of assuring him that he has attached me for life?...”
“Madame, I am to be pitied,” said the emperor gravely. “It is my evil
star.”
By the treaty of Tilsit the map of the continent was transformed.
Prussia lost half her territory. Dantzic was made a free town. Magdeburg
went to France. Hesse-Cassel and the Prussian possessions west of the
Elbe went to form the kingdom of Westphalia. The King of Saxony received
the grand duchy of Warsaw. Finland and the Danubian principalities were
to go to Alexander in exchange for certain Ionian islands and the Gulf
of Cattaro in Dalmatia.
Of far more importance than this change of boundaries was the private
understanding which the emperors came to at Tilsit. They agreed that the
Ottoman Empire was to remain as it was unless they saw fit to change its
boundaries. Russia might occupy the principalities as far as the Danube.
Peace was to be made, if possible, with England, and the two powers were
to work together to bring it about. If they failed, Russia was to force
Sweden to close her ports to Great Britain, and Napoleon was to do the
same in Denmark, Portugal, and the States of the Pope. Nothing was to be
done about Poland by Napoleon.
According to popular belief, the secret treaty of Tilsit included plans
much more startling: the two emperors pledged themselves to drive the
Bourbons from Spain and the Braganzas from Portugal, and to replace them
by Bonapartes; give Russia Turkey in Europe and as much of Asia as she
wanted; end the temporal power of the Pope; place France in Egypt; shut
the English from the Mediterranean; and to undertake several other
equally ambitious enterprises.
CHAPTER XIII
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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