The Court of the Empress JosephineImbert de Saint-Amand
History
The Court of the Empress Josephine
Imbert de Saint-Amand
Josephine, Empress, consort of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1763-1814
October 27, 1806, the Emperor made his formal entrance into Berlin,
surrounded by his guard and followed by the cuirassiers of the divisions
of Hautpoul and Nansouty. He proceeded in triumph from the
Charlottenburger gate to the King's Palace, of which he was to take
possession. The populace crowded the streets, but uttered no cries of hate
or flattery for the conqueror. "Prussia was happy," says Thiers, "at not
being divided, and at retaining its dignity in its disasters. The enemy's
entrance was not first the overthrow of one party and the triumph of
another; it contained no unworthy faction, indulging in odious joy and
applauding the presence of foreign soldiers! We Frenchmen, unhappier in
our defeats, have known this abominable joy; for we have seen everything
in this century: the extremes of victory and of defeat, of grandeur and of
abasement, of the purest devotion and of the blackest treachery!" Alas!
What Frenchman could have foretold in 1806 the disasters of 1814 and 1815?
The army deemed itself invincible and was wild with joyful pride. Davout,
whose men the Emperor had just congratulated, wrote to him in great
enthusiasm: "Sire, we are your tenth legion. Everywhere and at all times
the third corps will be for you what that legion was for Caesar." Never
did soldiers have greater enthusiasm or more confidence in their leader.
One might have said that Josephine, amid all these triumphs, had a
presentiment of the future. Victories could not dispel her sadness. Her
husband wrote to her November 1: "Talleyrand has come, and tells me that
you do nothing but cry. But what do you want? You have your daughters,
your grandchildren, and good news; certainly you have the materials for
happiness and content. The weather here is superb; not a drop of rain has
fallen in the whole campaign, I am in good health, and everything is
progressing favorably. Good by. I have received a letter from M. Napoleon;
I don't think it is from him but from Hortense. Love to all."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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