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
These five or six days of silence were taken up by the opening of
hostilities on the road from Stuttgart to Ulm, the crossing of the Danube,
and the occupation of Augsburg. From this city Napoleon wrote to Josephine
October 10: "I spent last night with the former Elector of Treves, who has
comfortable quarters. I have been on the move for a week. The campaign
opens with noteworthy successes. I am very well though it rains nearly
every day. Things have moved very quickly. I have sent to France four
thousand prisoners, eight flags, and have captured fourteen cannon. Good
by, my dear; I kiss you." Two days later the French army entered Munich in
triumph, the Austrians having been driven out of Bavaria. The Emperor
wrote to the Empress, October 12: "My army has entered Munich. The enemy
is partly on the other side of the Inn; the other army of sixty thousand
men I have blockaded on the Iller between Ulm and Memmingen. The enemy is
lost, has completely lost its head, and everything promises the luckiest,
shortest, and most brilliant campaign ever known. I leave in an hour for
Burgau on the Iller. I am well: the weather is frightful. It rains so that
I have to change my clothes twice a day. I love you."
The first successes of the campaign caused great excitement in Paris, as
is shown by the letters of Madame de Remusat, no great lover of military
glory, to her husband, who had accompanied the Empress to Strassburg;
every day this lady would jot down what had happened, and her interesting
correspondence brings the period vividly before us. October 12, she wrote,
the absence of the Empress leaving her time heavy on her hands: "How
gloomy and ill we are in this odious Paris! Please tell M. de Talleyrand
that it is really something pitiable. Not even a word of gossip! In short,
we are as bored as we are virtuous. I don't know which is the cause and
which the effect, but I do know that I am horribly bored. The solitude of
this great city is really remarkable; the theatres are empty; I hardly
ever go to them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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