Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of NapoleonVarious
History
Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon
Various
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
--[Joseph Bonaparte and Bernadotte had married sisters. Mario-Julie
and Eugenie Bernardine-Desiree Clary. The feeling of Bourrienne for
Bernadotte makes this passage doubtful. It is to be noticed that in
the same conversation he makes Napoleon describe Bernadotte as not
venturing to act without powers and as enterprising. The stern
republican becoming Prince de Monte Carlo and King of Sweden, in a
way compatible with his fidelity to the Constitution of the year
III., is good. Lanfrey attributes Bernadotte's refusal to join more
to rivalry than to principle (Lanfrey, tome i. p. 440). But in any
case Napoleon did not dread Bernadotte, and was soon threatening to
shoot him; see Lucien, tome ii. p. 107.]--
"He does not like me, and I am almost certain that he will oppose me. If
he should become ambitious he will venture anything. And yet, you
recollect in what a lukewarm way he acted on the 18th Fructidor, when I
sent him to second Augereau. This devil of a fellow is not to be
seduced. He is disinterested and clever. But; after all, we have but
just arrived, and know not what may happen."
Bernadotte, it was reported, had advised that Bonaparte should be brought
to a court-martial, an the two-fold charge of having abandoned his army
and violated the quarantine laws. This report came to the ear of
Bonaparte; but he refused to believe it and he was right. Bernadotte
thought himself bound to the Constitution which he had sworn to defend.
Hence the opposition he manifested to the measures of the 18th Brumaire.
But he cherished no personal animosity against Bonaparte as long as he
was ignorant of his ambitious designs. The extraordinary and complicated
nature of subsequent events rendered his possession of the crown of
Sweden in no way incompatible with his fidelity to the Constitution of
the year III.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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